Die Mommie, Die! Over-the-Top Hilarity on Island City Stage

Family maid Bootsie (Elizabeth Dimon) greets patriarch Sol (Troy J. Stanley) and daughter Edith (Suzanna Ninomiya) in Island City Stage’s campy Die, Mommy Die. (Photos by Matthew Tippins)

By Britin Haller For Florida Theatre Onstage

When is the last time you went to the theater and enjoyed two hours of pure unadulterated fun and sheer frivolity? How long has it been since you saw a melodramatic show void of heavy adult themes, a moral message, or basically a redeeming quality of any kind? Even SpongeBob and Disney musicals have important life lessons at the end. Die Mommie, Die! is that rare breed of entertainment that exists just for the camp of it. Trust us when we say there’s no message here. And that’s just the way it should be in Island City Stage’s final production of their twelfth season directed by ICS’s Artistic Director Andy Rogow.

To fully appreciate the artistry of Die Mommie, Die!, it’s necessary to understand a bit about the history of the melodrama and where the writer Charles Busch is coming from. Gone are the days of yore where stage and screen villains were hissed and booed at by eager audience members (Snidely Whiplash comes to mind), but one can imagine that happening here. Becoming most popular in Europe during the reign of Queen Victoria, the melodrama soon spread to the United States. This theatrical genre is most known for its use of over-the-top emotional characters, conflicts, and plots. Nothing is too extreme. The Master Thespian created by Jon Lovitz on Saturday Night Live (“I’m acting!”) is a great example.

As a young Jewish boy growing up in Manhattan, playwright Charles Busch fell in love with the melodrama, likely from the combination of his opera singer dad who owned an album store and the death of Charles’s mother when he was seven. He thusly became infatuated with actresses he watched in the movies. Busch studied drama at Northwestern, but wasn’t being cast, and so decided to create his own world of female roles he would play himself while dressed as a woman. It paid off, and over twenty-five plays and two films later, Charles Busch was inducted into the Gershwin’s Theater Hall of Fame.

In the lead role of Angela, Off-Broadway’s Kris Andersson not only fills his predecessor Charles Busch’s shoes, but slides into them as comfortably as putting on a pair of velvet house slippers. Although Die Mommie, Die! is “practically perfect in every way,” bored mother, housewife, and retired cabaret singer Angela Arden is no Mary Poppins, rather a compulsive prima donna on LSD (literally in one scene!) who is volatile, demanding, ego-driven, and overly flamboyant in ruffled pink chiffon and pantyhose. And those are her best qualities. Adding an extra level of campiness, Busch’s script actually calls for a female impersonator in this part. Andersson’s comedic timing is spot on, and in a barrage of costumes, each one more fabulous than the next, Andersson sashays around the entire stage that is diva Angela’s playhouse. Charles Busch would be proud of Andersson’s portrayal of a woman Mommie Dearest has nothing on.

Try as she might to stay relevant, Angela’s voice and looks are fading. “Nobody would hire you to sing at a dogfight,” her husband Sol Sussman, a famous film producer, tells her. No love lost there. Her grown kids are a mess. Daughter Edith cuts her mom’s image out of family photos, and son Lance is instigating orgies with faculty members at his university.

Angela has taken up with Tony, a tennis stud and struggling actor from her country club, and she wants to run away with him. But when Sol finds out about the affair and cuts off her credit cards, she has no choice but to do her husband in. She thinks she’s come up with the ideal way, but little does she know their housekeeper has her own agenda. What follows is madcap foray that includes arsenic, an errant pair of scissors, and a giant red suppository.

As Bootsie the family maid, four-time Carbonell winner Elizabeth Dimon holds her own with matriarch Angela. Bootsie’s loyalty to patriarch Sol knows no bounds, and there are no lengths to which she will not go for him. Dimon plays Bootsie with a dry sarcasm, a drollness if you will, especially fitting and hysterical given the pronounced exaggerations going on around her. Dimon’s small touches of smirks and giggles go a long way in showing the delight Bootsie feels for her own shenanigans.

Susanna Ninomiya and Kevin Veloz star as Edith and Lance, the two siblings who couldn’t be more different if they tried. Ninomiya has perfected the part of a spoiled little rich girl with an Oedipus complex for Daddy and an Electra complex for Mommy. She lights up with pure energy. Veloz has become a Wilton Manors’ audience favorite for good reason. As Lance, the totally mixed-up kid with a big heart, Veloz’s best moment comes when he enjoys being a girl.

As the hated man in Angela’s life, a.k.a. her husband Sol, Troy J. Stanley is superb. Sol may have been a good husband once, but is now reduced to a vindictive man who is having his wife followed by a private investigator. Sol takes every opportunity to put Angela down, and so no one is surprised when she finally does the evil deed to rid herself of him once and for all. The bit with Stanley and Andersson where Angela introduces poison to his system, and Sol’s lingering (and more lingering) death, has to be seen to be believed. One can only imagine the hilarity ensuing from this scene at choreography rehearsals. No spoilers here, as this is all part of the pre-show publicity.

As the adored man in Angela’s life, a.k.a. her young well-endowed lover Tony, two-time Carbonell winner Clay Cartland rises to the occasion in more ways than one. Tony, a self-described cool cat, is his own biggest fan, and Cartland brings the appropriate absurdity to the character that is needed to pull off his excessive manliness.

Thanks to Robert F. Wolin and Denise Proffitt, the set is old Hollywood-esque with a glamourous style reminiscent of a living room that might be pictured in one of the Look magazines that sit on a side table. It’s 1967, after all. W. Emil White’s costumes invoke the ‘60s with accessories such as white Nancy Sinatra boots and sock garters for men. Courtesy of Ardean Landhuis and Carbonell winner David Hart, psychedelic lighting (that acid trip!) and well-timed sound effects (the cat! those slaps!) add to the enormous enjoyment of the evening.

Anyone longing for the days when women who might appear in the Feud television series were celebrity icons, and anyone else really, will love Die Mommie, Die! In the end, despite the completely implausible plot, all’s well that ends well, and Angela realizes, because of course she does, that the show really must go on.

So drag yourself, and your friends, to the Island City Stage before Angela takes her final bow and sashays away into the glaring lights of the paparazzi forever. Arrive early to enjoy some jazzy ‘loving that man’ songs one can imagine legendary siren Angela Arden enthralling her disciples with.

Britin Haller is a mystery author and an editor for Turner Publishing. Her latest short story “So Many Shores in Crookland” can be read in the 150th issue of Black Cat Weekly. Britin’s latest edit, a cozy mystery novel called Dumpster Dying is by Michelle Bennington and available where books are sold. Find Britin across social media.

Die Mommie, Die! runs through September 22 at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Hwy, Wilton Manors, FL (south of Oakland Park Blvd.); Thurs at 7pm; Fri-Sat at 8pm; Matinees Sat at 2pm and Sun at 5pm; Running time approx. 130 minutes includes a 15-minute intermission. Tickets start at $40. Call 954-928-9800 or visit islandcitystage.org. The show is co-produced by the Warten Foundation.