‘Blonde’ brazenly fun night at the theater

Not often can I use the word “audacious” to describe a work of Spokane theater.

But “Dirty Blonde,” which tells the story of Mae West, is audacious in more ways than one, and I mean that as high praise.

Any play that draws on the work of Mae West, the original brazen hussy, is bound to be filled with double entendres, naughty innuendoes and bawdy lines like, “Hello boys. I feel like a million. But you’ll have to go one at a time.”

Yet this play by Claudia Shear is audacious in other ways as well. Shear has made the high-risk decision to intercut the story of Mae West’s rise with a story about two contemporary Mae West fans/obsessives.

I say high-risk, because one of these fans is clearly the playwright herself, and this could have become self-indulgent and tedious.

The other reason it’s high-risk? Both of these fans like to dress like Mae West, and one of them is a man, played by Michael Weaver (the theater’s artistic director). “Dirty Blonde” ends with both of them dressed in red gowns, blond wigs and feather boas, sharing a kiss.

See why audacious is the operative word?

The terrific thing about this evening is that it all pays off. Shear’s script is filled with surprising moments, Chad Henry’s direction is inspired and the three-person cast portrays 18 characters with talent and panache.

Nobody has more panache than Christina Lang, a fine Boise-based actress who plays West. Lang has all of the moves: The hand on the hip, the roll of the eyes and the walk that one character describes as being “like a truck driver with hips.”

More importantly, she gets West’s strange psychological makeup right. Lang portrays her as aloof, detached, self-obsessed and, in her old age, a kind of spooky cartoon version of her young self.

Still, you can’t say that Lang steals the show, because Weaver, in multiple roles, is right there with her the entire way. Weaver demonstrates his range by switching from an Irish cop to a palooka boxer to a prancing dancer to W.C. Fields. Yet it is as the young fan, Charlie, that Weaver is most memorable.

Somehow, in a story about Mae West, this play becomes a touching and bittersweet love story between Charlie and Jo (also played by Lang), two unusual and obsessed characters. I don’t know exactly how Shear pulled this off, but I do know that it would not work without strong performances from Weaver and Lang.

And I shouldn’t forget the third member of the cast, Tralen Doler, whose multiple roles are less central, but equally well done. Along with all of his other characters, he also plays piano for the musical numbers.

Musical numbers? While this show is not an actual musical, it does include several songs, mostly West’s vaudeville-style routines.

Henry fills the evening with highlight after highlight: A hysterical dance number with two ‘30s drag queens, a poignant scene at West’s mausoleum, a drunken taxi ride through Manhattan and a re-creation of a Vegas nightclub act.

And that doesn’t even count the big finish, with the two main characters in their red gowns.

I never had any doubts about whether Christina Lang could pull off a believable Mae West, but I have to say, when Michael Weaver did it, too – now that was a surprise.