Charles Busch, the Importance of Escapism, and the “Fathomless Possibilities of the Human Comedy”
The following mini-essay was published in the program for Out Front Theatre Company’s 2024 production of Charles Busch’s play Psycho Beach Party (directed by Paul Conroy; May 2nd — May 18th, 2024, Atlanta, GA; dramaturgical support provided by student assistant Macy Cardwell).
In the 1978 New York Times review of Charles Busch’s breakout comedy Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, one critic wrote that the play boasted “costumes flashier than pinball machines, outrageous lines, awful puns, sinister innocence, and harmless depravity.” Over the last forty years, these qualities have all become hallmarks of Busch’s work as he’s ensured his place as a prolific and singular voice in American queer theatre. From his pulpy underground shows like Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium (1984) and up to the Tony Award-nominated comedy The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife (2000), Busch’s plays have thrilled audiences with their gaudy spectacle, lowbrow puns, highbrow references, and contained chaos.
An early childhood tragedy saw Busch moving to Manhattan to live with his aunt, where he withdrew into the world of old movies — an obsession that continues to influence every corner of his body of work. While at Northwestern University, he wrote and starred in his first drag piece. As he wrote in his memoir, Busch saw drag less “an expression of outrage” and more “a passageway to channel the feminine in my nature, which turned out to be a place of authority.” His embrace of camp — of artifice and exaggeration, as Susan Sontag put it — became central to his plays as well.
It also made Busch a central figure in Theatre of the Ridiculous, a movement that combined queer performance aesthetics with experimental theatre. From its emergence in gritty, off-off-Broadway spaces in the mid-1960s, Theatre of the Ridiculous surpassed the bounds of absurdism in its aim to skewer realism in theatre and heteronormative society at large. Escapism was always a core tenet to Theatre of the Ridiculous, but as scholar Sean F. Edgecomb argues, by the time Busch entered the scene amidst the HIV/AIDS crisis, escapism “became a self-protective mode for collective agency.”
Understanding this context is key to understanding Psycho Beach Party, which premiered in 1987. Director Paul Conroy has repeatedly emphasized the importance of escapism, and while Psycho Beach Party may not appear to be tackling “serious” subject matter, it still fundamentally exists as a piece of queer resistance. As Edgecomb stresses, Busch’s work may not have been written to “criticize the social injustices of Reagan-era America,” but it still provided “a few hours of fun and entertainment for an audience whose lives revolved around a melancholic uncertainty.” Silliness is serious business.
Times change, however, and Psycho Beach Party has changed with it. Busch has given the play some rewrites specifically for Out Front Theatre Company — a far cry from its late-night premiere in 1987, where Busch himself played the lead role of Chicklet. Something like Psycho Beach Party — that was written for a very specific audience, venue, and context — might not always stand up to contemporary critical scrutiny, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Theatre is a living art form, and plays are constantly being reinterpreted by different artists and audiences. The play may not resonate with its original context, but it can still meet this new one and provide a few hours of entertainment for an audience in need of a good time.
–Elliott Folds, dramaturg
