Created by Marc Huestis and performed at the Tenderloin Club 181, Naked Brunch was a “beatnick soap opera” in four episodes in 1984. Huestis was eager to create a project with Doris Fish, by then the most famous drag queen in town after the success of Blonde Sin at Hotel Utah. The Sluts (Miss X, Tippi, and Ginger Quest) along with their new director/producer Phillip R Ford joined a cast that included future Vegas in Space cast members Silvana Nova, Arturo Galster, Tommy Pace and Sandahl Hebert (Kincaid). This was between filming principal photography of Vegas in Space in 1983 and 1985. The show was wildly popular and was in the vanguard of episodic drag theater that has since become a mainstay of drag.
Episode 1, January 1984
Episode 2 1984
Basement Finesse
by Mike Hippier
When I was seven years old, I produced, directed, and starred in a neighborhood production of Sleeping Beauty which became the talk of the town for years. It was also the apogee of my theatrical career, for soon thereafter I found other ways to be a center of attention, and I left the theater for good.
Marc Huestis, the director of Naked Brunch, was exactly the same kind of kid, I am sure, but fortunately for San Francisco, he is still producing, directing, and appearing in his own shows — shows which have the heart and enthusiasm of neighbor¬ hood basement productions but a good deal more finesse. He’s most widely known for his films, Unity, Transfusion, Excommunication, and Whatever Happened to Susan Jane, a feature-length film about the birth of the underground New Wave scene in San Francisco that has been his most accessible and popular film. Now there is Naked Brunch, not a film but a live soap opera featuring the Alexis Carrington Colby Players, which Huestis is presenting in bi-monthly segments at the 181 Club in the heart of the Tenderloin.
Naked Brunch, set in San Francisco’s North Beach during the Beatnik era, is the story of ingenue Betty VandeCamp, who has come to San Francisco in search of her long-lost mother only to find that her mother is the notorious drug peddler Nurse Junie May August. Nurse June is an habitue of the infamous Cafe LaRue, the refuge for the Beat and the Beaten that is run by Betty’s erstwhile Lesbian benefactor, Madame LaRue. It is this cafe that LaRue’s “dear, dear sister” Constance Mertz, the famous burger heiress, wants to trans¬ form into the world head¬ quarters of Mertz Burgers. In order to do this she must first have Madame LaRue declared insane and thrown into the loony bin. Enter Russian ex-spies Dr. Boris Beatinoff and Natasha to aid Mertz in her nefarious scheme. Confused? Don’t be. The plot is hardly as convoluted as that of Dynasty, and it is a hell of a lot more fun.
Naked Brunch is a delight. It is a bizarre and wonderful amalgamation of old movies, late-night TY shows, grade B musicals, and Saturday-morn¬ ing cartoons.
Huestis candidly admits steal¬ ing outright dialogue from shows such as Mildred Pierce, Caged, and High School Confidential. Many of the characters seem familiar too, from the stereotypical bull dyke jail matron, Lez . . .uh, Luz (“I’m gonna lock you in your cage tonight, I’m gonna lock
you tramps up really tight, And we’ll rock and roll together through the night”), to the poor, addled, drug-addicted, ex- chanteuse, Zizi LaFrance (“I’m bored when I’m adored, I’m blase”).
What Huestis cannot have purloined, however, is the unique group of performers he has assembled for this show. Notable among the cast (but who is not?) is a bevy of some of my favorite drag queens — Tippy, Miss X, Sylvana Nova, and— attention please — Doris Fish. (Love those dentines, girl.) There are “real” women as well —Sandahl Hebert, for instance, Ann Block of Susan Jane fame, and Janice Sukiatis of the Angels of Light. There is even a man or two in the cast, including Huestis himself, who cannot resist the temptation to cast himself in the role of the Adorable Young Bellhop, which
gives him the chance to take off (almost) all his clothes. (Nice body, Marc. I’d take my clothes off too.) Nearly as much fun as the cast is the audience. Huestis productions always seem to at¬ tract the kind of crowd I came to San Francisco for. Mustachioed muscleboys sit next to kids with pointy hair. Outrageous drag queens mingle with “hip” straight couples.
Unfortunately, the production is not without its draw¬ backs. The sound system is atrocious. Sound effects overpower the actors, who cannot be heard. The location is pretty much a disaster also. The club is far too small to handle the crowds that besiege it, and the drug peddlers and street people
who hang out in front make a solo outing a hazardous event. Furthermore, the performers are basically dedicated amateurs, which gives much of the production its charm but also has its drawbacks. Sylvana Nova is on vacation this month, for instance, so her character, Zizi LaFrance, was conveniently asked to appear on the Jack Paar show for the duration. Word has it that next month Ms. Fish may be unavailable, so God only knows what will hap¬ pen to Constance Mertz and her burger empire. Finally, this second episode was not as polished or as rehearsed as the first. Musical numbers were fewer — a shame. A couple of the dance numbers were repetitive. (But then, why not? Tippi does a Beatnik bump and grind—rather, a roll and grovel — that deserves— no, demands repetition.)
In spite of these relatively minor flaws, Naked Brunch is truly superb, the underground event of 1984, and I highly recommend that you drop whatever you are doing Friday night, January 20th and fly to the repeat (and last) performance of Naked Brunch, Part Two. Then you, too, will be able to wonder, “Will Betty succumb to the evil advances of the jailhouse matron? Will Constance Mertz really cover the tabletops of Cafe LaRue with formica? What kind of drugs does Nurse June push, anyway? And where does Doris Fish get her wigs?”
Naked Branch, Episode II
181 Club (181 Eddy)
Friday, Jan. 20, 10:30 PM
Episode 3 April 1984
Episode 4 July 1984
He was striking. Although he had a masculine veneer, he also had a soft quality that made him pretty. And he looked very familiar. Perhaps he was an ex-trick. “Do I know you?” I flirted. “Hi, my name is Phil. We’ve never met. But didn’t you do the film Whatever Happened to Susan Jane?” he replied in a distinctive Australian accent. “Wait a minute. I’ve heard that voice before. Are you Doris Fish?” The butch man turned nelly. “Well, love, I’ve been sprung!” Doris Fish, aka Phil Mills, was one of the most famous drag queens in town, and star of the notorious group Sluts a Go-Go. The group included Miss X, self-proclaimed “heiress to the Brand X fortune,” and Tippi, “the oldest living child star in captivity.” They were performing at the Hotel Utah, as well as making guest appearances with the glam-rock group the Tubes. They were also making the gender-bending sci-fi thriller Vegas in Space. Although the sensibilities of the Sluts were less political than mine, they were a force to be reckoned with. And I needed an art project.
It was a glamorous mixture of the Cotton Club, a Fassbinder film and a beatnik coffeehouse. My first friend in town, Greg Cruikshank, was booking acts that varied from porn star Leo Ford to singer John Sex to an up-and-coming drag queen named RuPaul. I approached him with the idea of a new Huestis/Fish show. He was game. But what would Doris and I create together? During this period, the TV soap Dynasty was all the rage. For an hour each week, we cheered and hissed at its camp vulgarity; our queer eyes glued to the set as we watched the war between the Carringtons and the Colbys. The catfights between Alexis and Crystal were just the catnip we needed to momentarily forget the grim reality of AIDS. Dynasty, or Die Nasty as we called it, demanded a queer send-up. I came up with a monthly drag queen/beatnik soap opera titled Naked Brunch. In honor of our new TV muse Joan Collins, we called our new theatrical troupe “The Alexis Carrington Colby Players.” The coterie from the Sluts a Go-Go joined up with my stock group of actors and several newbies—including
Rehearsals for Naked Brunch soon began in earnest at the glamorous Club 181. Except in the light of day, it was really quite a dump. Often, as we’d rehearse a dance number, we’d see rats scamper across the stage. And the place also literally stank. (Later we learned that two dead bodies had been stashed in the rafters years before, and were decaying right above our kick-line.) Naked Brunch proved to be a huge hit. The audiences got bigger with each episode, so much that one night the fire marshal threatened to shut the show down. That made us happy! The scripts got better, too. Our script writing and performances were all-consuming. We had little time to think about the menace of AIDS lurking just outside the House of Fish. But still it was ubiquitous. At each show meeting there was always the news of another diagnosis or another death among a rapidly contracting circle of friends and colleagues. The disease really hit home at the end of the run of Episode III of Naked Brunch. Throughout his performances, Tommy Pace wore full-length gloves over his multiple costumes. Odd, I thought, Tommy never wore gloves before. After the final show, I popped my head into his dressing room cubicle to pay tribute to his brilliance. I noticed the gloves were off—and on Tommy’s arms were several raised purple blotches. He had been hiding the fact that he had the beginnings of KS.