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The Dress Makes the Man

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The swinging ‘60s are back, with a vengeance. Austin Powers is shagging Felicity, Woodstock is once again host to hot music and playwright/drag actor Charles Busch is in the throes of a very bad acid trip. Clad in flowing floral chiffon and a shocking red wig that even Jill St. John would covet, the diva is rehearsing his latest creation, erstwhile recording star Angela Andrews, in “Die! Mommy! Die! or The Fall of the House of Sussman,” which opens at the Coast Playhouse on Friday.

Part Greek tragedy, part homage to ‘60s horror films like “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” the play is quintessential Busch, allowing him to tackle more costume changes than Cher, while maniacally spoofing great screen ladies in not-so-great flicks.

“It’s Grand Dame Guignol,” says Busch, best known for his play, “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,” off-Broadway’s longest running nonmusical, which premiered in Los Angeles in 1990 and was the last time Busch, a New Yorker, trod the boards in the Southland.

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“Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner--they all played women with wrong values, filled with monstrous self-absorption. In the plays I’ve done, I’m usually a woman who has a past, constructs a false persona and has to reveal who she is under the mask.

“Of course,” he adds tellingly, “I generally pay for my crime at the end.”

Busch’s attraction to glamour began when he was 8 years old and was taken to the old Metropolitan Opera House to see a production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” starring the great bel canto soprano Joan Sutherland. Bowled over by everything--from “her big red hair to the painted trees,” the theatrical imagery stuck, laying down blueprints for the alluring women Busch would create over the years.

Aided by false eyelashes the size of spider webs, Wonderbras, girdles, wigs and pantyhose that give his already-shapely legs more than a passing resemblance to Ann Miller’s, Busch works within a hybrid of moxie, myth and lots of Max Factor.

“I’m re-creating this [illusion] every time I go on stage,” the surprisingly soft-spoken Busch acknowledges, deftly applying heavy pancake makeup in his dressing room at the Coast, his offstage appearance more benign than brazen, his only nod to the dramatic a shaved head and waxed eyebrows.

Coincidentally, Busch is re-creating another of his plays, “Psycho Beach Party,” this time for film. Laced with sizable chunks of murder and madness, this paean--also to the ‘60s--is Busch’s first screenplay.

Produced by Strand Releasing and starring Thomas Gibson of “Dharma & Greg,” Nicholas Brendon from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Busch, in requisite drag, the film features a cinematic novelty: A sex scene between Busch, playing Police Capt. Monica Sharpe, and Gibson, cast as Kanaka, the world’s best, and hunkiest, surfer.

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Explains Busch: “I rather enjoyed it. I felt like I was in this ‘70s soft-core porn movie.”

Gibson, who is simultaneously filming “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas,” and will soon be seen in “Eyes Wide Shut,” commented, through his publicist, “I’m having a fabulous time on a wonderful picture with one of the greatest actresses of our generation.”

Directed by Robert Lee King, whose short film, “The Disco Years” was part of the “Boys Life” trilogy, “Psycho Beach Party” is scheduled for release next year.

“It’s very risky material,” King notes. “The script is like nothing you’ve ever read before, and the movie’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. There are so many different genres--beach movies, ‘50s psychological thrillers, ‘70s slasher films--all in one meat-grinder of a comedy. As for Thomas, he’s someone going from a $56-million movie to [our] $1.5-million movie, and he’s having a blast.”

While Busch has had bit parts in films before (“Addams Family Values”), this foray into screendom is proving to be something of an aphrodisiac. Sitting around in full drag, rewriting dialogue, he doesn’t feel at all weird among the “big butch grips coming up and saying, ‘Hey, man.’ ”

“I feel like Lucille Ball at DesiLu; of course, I couldn’t have Monica wear an ordinary policewoman’s uniform. It had to have a touch of Chanel.”

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Indeed, mere mortals might feel schizoid playing two very different women--especially if the woman is, er, a man. Busch says it’s a strange Pirandellian conceit, but his public knows that he is always Charles Busch doing a great lady who might happen to be playing an actress . . . or a police chief.

Thespian skills aside, the playwright has had an astonishingly prolific career. Busch has written 10 plays, including, “Red Scare on Sunset,” “The Lady in Question,” and Manhattan Theater Club’s upcoming “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” which will star Linda Lavin. And while the writer admits to “putting on plays like other people put on barbecues,” he and longtime friend and “Die! Mommy! Die!” director Kenneth Elliott have no plans to mount this play in New York.

Busch says it was written specifically for Los Angeles, where he believes the audience is more hip to movie parody. Originally discussed last fall as a film noir-meets-Oedipus vehicle, “Die!” teems with Busch’s trenchant wit and over-the-top preening and sashaying.

“Instead of Oedipus,” Elliott explains, “Charles decided to cross-pollinate the Electra myth with horror films. He comes up with ideas that wouldn’t occur to me in a million years.”

Elliott did not direct Busch’s excursion into straight drama, 1998’s “Queen Amarantha,” and though it featured Busch in drag, it was not what his public wanted to see. “We tried to do this play without laughs,” the veteran performer admits, “but they didn’t buy it.”

What Busch’s fans do buy is glamour: the bigger-than-life, tortured, and torturing, prima donna. Even with Charles Ludlam gone, as well as, just recently, Charles Pierce, drag is still alive and well with Charles Busch, who continues to throw his audience into paroxysms of laughter in the process. And if he gets to kiss Thomas Gibson on screen? Hey, more glam--and gam--to him.

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* “Die! Mommy! Die!,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 665-8587; (323) 650-8587. Opens Fri. Thur.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 7 and 10 p.m. and Sun., 4 and 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 8. $25.

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