Anxieties of Show-Biz Life, Direct From a Star’s Lips

The desperation behind Shirley Bassey singing “It Must Be Him” isn’t so far from Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield 8,” spitting out the line: “Face it, Mama, I was the slut of all time!” It doesn’t take a genius to connect those dots. It does, however, take an artist to make something satirically fresh from the notion of show-biz brass masking inner torment.

And, baby, Lypsinka is artist enough for a hundred Hollywoods.

The very embodiment of superstardom and its attendant pressures, Lypsinka is the “personification of pizazz” created by John Epperson. The latest showcase for the Lyp, “Lypsinka! The Boxed Set,” is now at the Tiffany Theater, marking Epperson’s first L.A. area appearance since he brought “As I Lay Lip-Synching” to Santa Monica’s Highways in 1995.

“Organic” and “drag” usually aren’t the most compatible of words. Nor are “organic” and “lip-syncing.” The peculiar genius of Lypsinka, a woman born to entertain, dying to please yet haunted by secrets, panic attacks and the occasional, near-fatal lapse in poise, resides in her weirdly effortless quality.

Lypsinka is “The Three Faces of Eve” times 27. She’s channeling untold personalities, from Bassey to Taylor to Joan Crawford to Who Knows Who All. Her material comes from Douglas Sirk movie melodramas, “Gypsy,” “Carrie,” musical comedy dames such as Dolores Gray, Kay Thompson and on and on.

With all those disparate voices flying out of the mouth of one vivacious redhead, you sense trouble. Watch it! you think. She’s gonna blow!

Epperson’s character has all the moves, chops and wrist-flutterings down cold. Yet Lypsinka’s eternally finger-snapping hands sometimes turn against their owner, menacingly. She’ll rip into a song, only to freak out in the middle of it, as flashes of red--straight from Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” complete with Bernard Herrmann’s nutso music--flood the stage. Then, zoop, we’re back into the song again.

This is a small-scale show with a large-scale sense of invention, no little thanks to Mark T. Simpson’s lighting design. The precisely detailed sound design is Epperson’s. As in past shows, the killer segment features Lypsinka gliding between three imaginary telephones, answering calls in varying states of distress to the movie-derived words of Crawford, Bette Davis, dozens of others.

The 70-minute show does have its dry spells. “The Boxed Set” over-relies, to my taste, on consciously funny nightclub and variety-show material, as when a “Mame” number is followed by a sloshed “12 Days of Christmas” routine.

Lypsinka is deadliest when inverting dead-serious material, commenting on the sincerest expressions of this business we call show. At one point, Miss Crawford goes off about the lack of glamour in the Academy Awards show, through audibly clenched teeth, and the sanctimony is jaw-dropping.

Through it all, Epperson is a geyser of glamour and yet, in the details and double-takes, wonderfully subtle. When the vocalizing Lypsinka grabs her fistful of stage air on precisely the right lyric, she’s more than an impersonator. Like all indelible show-biz creations, she’s performing as if her sanity depended on it--as if she came out of the womb, hollering: “Stand back, world! Get offa my runway!”

* “Lypsinka! The Boxed Set,” Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 10. $35-$48.50. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

John Epperson: Lypsinka

Created by John Epperson. Directed by Kevin Malony. Set design by Jim Boutin. Lighting by Mark T. Simpson. Costumes by Bryant Haven. Soundtrack design by John Epperson. Production stage manager Kevin Carroll.