‘Alice’ Takes a Humorous Look at ‘60s

It’s time for summer camp. At the Celebration Theatre, that means a loud late-night drag production, “Go Aks Alice,” from the Plush Life Players. It’s based on “Go Ask Alice,” the late-’60s diary of an anonymous teenager who later overdosed on drugs.

That sounds grim, but this one is strictly for laughs--at the expense of everyone who passed through the ‘60s, not just poor Alice. Not surprisingly, the producer-director is Eric W. Waddell, who was associated with “The Real Live Brady Bunch.”

The performances are big and sharp, but they almost play second fiddle to the clothes, supposedly plucked from the actors’ closets. The fashions worn by the teenagers are deliriously garish and wild, late ‘60s-early ‘70s in extremis--with hippie-dippy, psychedelic and Pop Art strains colliding onstage with one another and with the more conservative designs of the older characters. The teenagers’ patterns, many of them designed for wafer-thin girls, are especially funny when worn by men.

In the title role, John Copeland is a plucky heroine-victim who retains enough innocence to win our sympathies--and also gets to show off two radically different hairstyles.

The adults are just as memorable. Mom (Marc-Ian Sklar) is a big-bosomed terror. Waddell took the primary non-drag role, the smilingly obtuse Dad. Michael Carr gets some of the nastiest but biggest laughs as poor old Gran, who makes feeble attempts to bond with her granddaughter. And when Alice runs off to San Francisco, she’s taken under the wing of the glamorous and intimidating Super Sheila (Christian Satrustegui), who spells big trouble.

These are super caricatures. And to its credit, this show hardly depicts Alice’s druggie world as a wonderland--the derision is applied with a very even hand.

* “Go Aks Alice,” Celebration Theater, 7051 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays, Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. Dark Aug. 9. Ends Aug. 16. $12. (213) 666-4266. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.