STAGE REVIEW : ‘Vampire Lesbians’ Soars Beyond the Ridiculous

“Try throwing a dinner party for two pinheads and a Cyclops,” wails someone in Charles Busch’s “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” at the Coronet Theatre.

Try inventing ridiculous names (Enid Wetwhistle ? La Condesa de Scrofula de--well, never mind). Try wearing the most soigne fright wigs this side of Halloween (creator is Elizabeth Katherine Carr). Try constructing the most ridiculous costumes (John Glaser) this side of “Beach Blanket Babylon.” Try besting the late Charles Ludlam at his own Ridiculous Theatre game.

Busch has. And then some. Can a show called “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” (preceded by a curtain-raiser titled “Sleeping Beauty or Coma”) be anything but camp transvestism punctuated by blatantly, ostentatiously vulgar jokes? Of course not. The title tells you so. But Busch’s and director Kenneth Elliott’s Theatre-in-Limbo company (which is anything but) delivers on its promise. This is a theater of knobby knees, winks, tongues in cheeks, eye-liners and one-liners.

Theater to gross out by.

No cow is sacred, especially not Hollywood or Las Vegas. (No joke is sacred either. “This isn’t hair on my head, these are nerve-endings,” used here, first came out of Phyllis Diller’s mouth on a verrrry early appearance on the Jack Paar show!) But then the plots are as outlandish as the play titles and mere devices for spoofing anything within shooting range. In the case of “Sleeping Beauty,” it’s haute couture ; in “Vampire” it’s Dracula and silent screen stars.

Mostly, though, these are characters in search of excuses for great get-ups and off-color jokes. “Sleeping Beauty” is a more limited effort than “Vampire Lesbians,” but both are live-wire examples of the Ludlam/Ridiculous tradition, which explains “Vampire’s” ongoing success Off-Broadway (it’s been packing them in at the Provincetown Playhouse since 1985).

Busch is the fulcrum. Prettier than Ludlam, he plays several female parts--roles--to confectionary perfection. He revels in Sarah Bernhardt-style asides, batting eyelashes and topping himself from one wig to the next. His Madeleine Astarte, silent-screen vamp, looks and acts like a case of genetic tampering between Lucille Ball and Marlene Dietrich.

Tom Aulino protests too much as frantic designer Sebastian Lore in “Sleeping Beauty.” But Andy Halliday (the prim Miss Thick in “Sleeping Beauty” and Etienne the butler in “Vampire”) has a face made for caricature. His mouth looks like something that happened when the slasher missed his throat.

It’s not all up to the men, however. The real women in this cast make some of the strongest contributions. Monica Horan is memorable as Anthea Arlo in the curtain-raiser and as starlet Renee Vain in “Vampire.” But it is blonde Julie Halston who really takes it away as “Sleeping Beauty’s” flaky Enid and “Vampire’s” slinkily-attired Succubus and growling Condesa--an imperious movie queen in perpetual high dudgeon. (“I have reason to believe La Condesa is one of the undead”--”No, darling, she just looks that way.” Yes, it’s that kind of humor. Low.)

Sets and lights (B.T. Whitehill and Vivien Leone, respectively) are incidental to this show, which is fundamentally (accent on the first syllable) and deliberately all about costume, camp and coarseness.

Not for all markets, but certainly for certain markets. Rarely has a show been better suited to the dingy, dark, mildly decadent ambience of the Coronet. A few months ago, one might have added the word decrepit too, but the management has spruced up the place some.

All the more reason to expect that “Vampire Lesbians,” with its guaranteed cult status, might run on and on, ad infinitum.

At 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 10 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Indefinitely. Tickets: $18-$22; (213) 659-2400.