'Pageant' is a beauty of a parody
STONEHAM - "Pageant" is silly, saucy, and sharp. It's also about five times smarter than it needs to be.
After all, it's a sendup of beauty pageants with a single gimmick: All the contestants are played by men in drag. How smart does it need to be to get a laugh or two?
But it's a good thing it's so intelligently written and performed, because otherwise at close to two hours the show might start to, you should excuse the expression, drag. You need more than fabulous costumes to sustain interest for that long in what's essentially a skit, and fortunately this 1991 show's chief creator, Bill Russell, seems to know that.
Russell, best known for the Tony-nominated "Side Show," himself directs the Stoneham Theatre's production of "Pageant" with dazzle and crisp timing. He's also got some ace collaborators in the art of over-the-top pageantry: Shea Sullivan, a Miss Oklahoma runner-up and the resident choreographer for the Miss Florida Pageant(!), creates one blissful collage of dance cliches after another, and longtime Miss America costumer Stephen Yearick's feathery, furry, flashy designs here hysterically combine ditz and ritz.
Just watch Miss Texas (Danny O'Connor), clad in a shiny electric-blue bikini accented with white cowboy boots, ride a tiny rocking horse and fire off her imaginary pistols. Or gaze on in awe as Miss West Coast (Adam Cochran), in a scary yellow cocoon-dress, delivers her interpretive dance of birth, death, and reincarnation - a vision that's almost as disturbing as the eco-conscious free-verse "poem" intoned by Nick Cearley's Miss Great Plains.
But we also mustn't slight the accordion-playing, roller-skating Miss Industrial Northeast (Corbitt Williams), whose extreme lack of talent is a talent in itself. And the rousing lounge-gospel number by Miss Bible Belt (Michael Joyce), "I'm Banking On Jesus," rightfully brings the house down.
As you may have noticed, the regional divisions in this particular pageant are a little unorthodox, the better to load the stage with instantly recognizable accents, particularly of the syrupy Southern variety. (John Ambrosino's drawl as Miss Deep South takes top honors in that category.) But emcee Frankie Cavalier, played with hilariously cheesy charisma and awesome dance chops by recent Boston Conservatory graduate Nicholas Ryan Rowe, keeps them all swirling around the stage so bewitchingly that we don't mourn the absence of less easily stereotyped states.
There's also a twist that allows for a whole other category of satire: Russell's Miss Glamouresse Pageant is sponsored by an imaginary beauty-product manufacturer, Glamouresse. So, interspersed with the talent segments and the swimsuit competition and the big, nearly surreal production number involving a spaceship, each contestant delivers a promotional spot for one of many marvelous Glamouresse products: a hairspray that repairs the ozone layer, a deodorant that's worn as a fashion accessory, a solar-powered set of curlers.
But wait - there's more! The contestants also field calls on the "Beauty Crisis Hotline"; one distraught caller wants to know if she should stop taking her expensive medication in order to have more money to buy makeup.
Yes, it's all pretty silly, and it doesn't try too hard to be more than that. But "Pageant" applies a sharp wit to some pretty witless cultural assumptions about women, talent, and beauty, and you know what? That's a beautiful thing.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com. 