Thrillpeddlers Proudly Presents
"Pearls Over Shanghai": A Revival of the Cockettes' 1970 Musical Extravaganza. Thrillpeddlers is proud to announce the second production of their 2009 season, "Pearls Over Shanghai," an original musical by Link Martin and Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn. This show is the centerpiece of our second annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival, and will mark the 40th anniversary of the formation of The Cockettes, a gender-bending theatrical troupe who not only originated this show, but also exerted a profound influence on the culture of our times, from the phenomenon of midnight movies to glitter rock stars and their outrageous fashions.
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"Pearls Over Shanghai" is now through New Years on Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm. Thrillpeddlers' Hypnodrome is located at 575 10th Street, San Francisco.
Based loosely on John Colton's scandalous 1926 Broadway play "The Shanghai Gesture" (later transformed into a deliriously decadent art deco film noir by Josef von Sternberg in 1941), "Pearls Over Shanghai" is a comic mock-operetta about white slavery and miscegenation set in the colorful world of 1937 Shanghai, China. Link Martin parts the bamboo curtain, his politics swept aside by his love of the mystery and intrigue of the Orient. Placing his story at the crossroads of good and evil, his exotic "old sin town" is filled with singing sailors, witty whores, foolish immortals, handmaidens and henchmen, all taking their places in streets teeming with a mix of foreign aristocrats, opium addicts, and gangland slave-trade czars.
Originally produced as a Nocturnal Dream Show and performed at midnight at the old Palace Theatre in Chinatown, "Pearls Over Shanghai" was the fabled and fabulous Cockettes' first and best original showpiece. This musical became the crown jewel of The Cockettes repertoire, enjoying three revivals in two years, including a notorious and infamous run at New York's Anderson Theatre in 1971.
Although "Pearls Over Shanghai" had long been germinating in the fertile mind of Link Martin, it struck the trend-setting, gender-bending theatrical troupe as extremely fortuitous when the real Peking Opera played the same stage at the Palace Theatre.
At the time, much was made over a missing trunk of sequined kimonos and props that seemed to vanish. However, the items were not lost and did reappear, some months later, spawning "Pearls Over Shanghai" Two, Three, and Four. For the Thrillpeddlers production, original Cockettes Tahara and Billy Bowers will lend their considerable talents to our resident costume mistress Kara Emry in order to create original designs reminiscent of the opulent 1930s Orient as well as the psychedelic splendor of 1960s San Francisco.
Stage Director for "Pearls Over Shanghai" is Russell Blackwood, and original Cockette and composer Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn will serve as Musical Director. The cast will include original Cockette Rumi Missabu reprising his role as the evil Madame Gin Sling.
Connie Champagne, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and Leanne Borghesi will alternate in the role of Petrushka, first created by disco diva Sylvester in the original productions. With a supporting cast of twenty, costumes a-plenty, and a score of some two dozen songs, this production promises to be the most eye-popping and toe-tapping in the Hypnodrome's history, with the scent of intoxicating perfume, poisonous flowers, opium, and sex oozing from every scene.
Pairs of patrons will surely enjoy Hypnodrome's Shock Box seats for two, which garnered SF Weekly's "Best of San Francisco 2008" for "Best Bonus Theater Experience." These themed seats include sumptuous Turkish Lounges, as well as private boxes including "Heaven" and "Hell," "Pharaoh's Tomb," and "Padded Cell," which offer the opportunity for a heightened psychedelic experience during the "opium" blackout sequence at the climax of "Pearls Over Shanghai"—with added special effects as a nod to the 1950s horror movie gimmicks of William Castle.
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