Charles Busch: A New Life for Die Mommie Die!

About the author:
The new off-Broadway production of Charles Busch's delicious Hollywood homage Die Mommie Die! comes at a particularly apt time. Though the play is set in 1967, avid readers of celeb magazines will find the plotline of an aging diva eager to permanently get rid of her controlling producer hubby easy to believe okay, maybe the poisoned suppository is a bit far-fetched…. The best news is the return of Busch himself to the stage as Angela Arden, a red-headed spitfire swanning around her Beverly Hills mansion in a series of sumptuous costumes by Michael Bottari and Ronald Case. After proving himself as a playwright with works such as the Tony-nominated comedy The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and last season's Our Leading Lady, Busch is showing off his skills as an actor again, delighting both longtime fans and a new generation of theatergoers who never got to see Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Red Scare on Sunset or The Lady in Question. For Broadway com, Busch charted the winding path of Die Mommie Die! from stage to big screen and now back to the stage—and confessed the secret reason he agreed to take on an off-Broadway run of the show.

Many times I've been asked if it's difficult memorizing lines that I've written. It's usually pretty easy. The challenge, of course, is not to get lazy and paraphrase and then justify it to the stage manager with the excuse, "It's better this way."

Memorizing Die Mommie Die for this current off-Broadway production was, frankly, a nightmare. I've performed so many versions of this material since 1999. First it was a play that I did in Los Angeles. In 2003, I acted in the film version. About a year ago, we did a staged reading for the Actors Fund, which involved a degree of rewriting. For this New York premiere, I've done extensive work on the script, placing the story more firmly in the context of the 1960s. There is one confrontation scene between myself and the housekeeper, Bootsie, played by the wonderful Kristine Nielsen, that I've played in so many variations, I still occasionally find myself about to slip into the scene from the movie.

Playing the role of Angela Arden on stage is vastly different from playing it on film. Both experiences are fascinating to me. Die Mommie Die is an homage to a genre of suspense films in the 1960s that has been dubbed "Grand Dame Guignol." These were films such as Whatever Happened To Baby Jane; Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Straitjacket; Die, Die My Darling; and The Big Cube, in which great stars such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead and Lana Turner kept their long careers going by giving tour-de-force performances in increasingly tawdry thrillers. I've been doing film parodies on stage for many years, but what a fantastic challenge it was to actually do this on film. I could recreate the acting styles of these women in their own medium and not have to project to the last seat in the theater.

Playing the role again in the theater has its own pleasures. We have a magnificent set that truly looks like a Spanish Gothic Beverly Hills mansion. Rather than feeling like I'm recreating an old movie, I feel like I'm an aging stage actress appearing in a well-heeled revival of one of her great roles. Hey, wait a minute—maybe I am an aging stage actress appearing in a well-heeled revival of one of my great roles!

In the past decade, I've been doing more writing than acting. I began writing as a way to give myself opportunities to act, and only a few years ago did it finally occur to me that I was enjoying the act of writing as much as performing. It seemed I was only doing a run of a play every three or four years. About a year ago, I made a resolution to do more performing. I can get terribly sedentary. My obsession with reality TV has gone too far. I have way too much emotion invested in the results of Survivor, American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, Top Chef and The Next Food Network Star. Those are only the ones I'll admit to. Doing Die Mommie Die at the New World Stages is part of my twelve-step program to break my addiction to reality TV.

More important, I'm so glad to be back on stage and to have the opportunity to play a role eight times a week. Before we began rehearsals, I was a little concerned that I might not have the stamina. I haven't used my Equinox gym membership once since I joined three years ago. I had a checkup with my doctor. I asked him, "Do you think I have the stamina to do this big role?" He's a great doctor but not too savvy about the show biz. He asked me, "Do you have any heavy lifting to do?" I replied, "I sure do. I'm carrying the plot!"