Landry's 'Milkman' delivers lusty laughs
There are plays one attends out of a sense of duty -- classics, for instance, or new works of Significance. But devotees of Ryan Landry and his ragtag Gold Dust Orphans troupe know they want a screamingly good time, and the Orphans always deliver.
"The Milkman Always Comes Twice" (an amalgam, and then some, of the film-noir classics "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice") may lack the satirical bite of the company's last production, "The Plexiglass Menagerie," which skewered the post-Katrina FEMA debacle, but who needs redeeming social value when what's on the menu is a lusty, funny raunch-fest?
North End restaurateur Tony Tagliatelli (Josh Pritchard, an Orphan acolyte sporting a curly black wig plus a penciled-on Chef Boyardee mustache) is in a pickle: How do you make pizza with no milk products? (A newsboy -- Fred Flinstein, whose role will later expand -- has just announced a dairy strike.)
Tagliatelli pours out his woes to a regular, the insurance salesman Barton Keyes (Larry Coen, who matches Edward G. Robinson's corner-of-the-mouth delivery while adding a soupcon of Truman Capote). Keyes is pushing Tony to take out a policy -- maybe not a bad idea, once we learn the provenance of his "green sauce." Even if Tagliatelli's greedy vamp of a wife weren't intent on doing him in, his own slovenly ingredients could easily do the trick.
"Milkman" is really Maxine Tagliatelli's show, and company stalwart Penny Champayne (a.k.a. Scott Martino, who also aced the costumery) plays her to the gartered hilt. "Indemnity" star Barbara Stanwyck was subtle by comparison, and Lana Turner downright bland in "Postman." Striking panting poses, back arched against the proscenium, or seductively twitching her skirt as she paces and plots, Champayne's Maxine is the ultimate femme fatale, for whom multiple murders are mere foreplay.
Tony's beloved Mama -- auteur Landry himself, beehived, be-moled, and pretty much limited to a vocabulary of "Prego," with some choice exceptions -- is clearly living on borrowed time, given Maxine's defamatory disses ("I don't speak Pig Latin," she snarls).
Enter Colton (Chris Loftus), an out-of-work dairyman, romantic patsy ("I'll buy you all the pretty things your heart desires," he promises Maxine: "minks, diamonds, Hummel figurines . . ."), and -- there's some ambiguity here -- fall guy or cold-blooded accomplice.
Maxine resists Colton's efforts to convert her to the pastoral life; he dreams of a dairy farm "in the country" ("Braintree, here we come!"). Unfortunately for Maxine, another paramour (delightful, adorable Olive Another) proves more amenable -- at least until she meets the business end of a pitchfork.
Such details -- plus an R rating for racy language and simulated sex -- are probably all you need to know to determine whether "Milkman" might be your cup of chianti. For the ever-growing hordes of Landryholics, it's a welcome tonic. 