Beauty Queens

Women who compete in beauty pageants will endure a lot to win that crown: they'll rub Preparation H under their eyes, put Vaseline on their teeth, wax everything, and use double sided tape to make sure there are no wardrobe malfunctions during the swimsuit competition. The contestants in the Miss Glamouresse Pageant are willing to go even further: they're tucking their business.

In the musical comedy Pageant, which opens this weekend at Stoneham Theatre, the aspiring beauty queens are played by men. Six brave actors (with the help of one determined costume designer) will brave the talent competition, a physical fitness segment, and yes: the swimsuit competition. For a suburban theater company with an affinity for classic musicals and Neil Simon comedies, this campy musical is an unexpected choice.

"You might say that," dryly notes Weylin Symes, the company's Producing Artistic Director. Then he laughs and admits he was a little unsure about producing the show, but the book won him over. "It's a musical satire," he explains, "and if the contestants were played by real women the audience would be laughing at them. What makes it funny, and makes the point so well, is that it's men and it's safe to laugh at them.

"I'm not sure how our audiences will respond," he chuckles, "but it's a very funny show and I think anyone looking for entertainment will enjoy it."

Broadway vet Bill Russell, who wrote the book and lyrics for the show, echoes the sentiment.

"We don't consider this a drag show," Russell says. "It's cross gendered acting. The difference is that drag implies a kind of comment on women, while here the guys are playing the women for real, wacky though some of them are. By having a man do that, it makes a larger statement. This show is really about how beauty is sold to women in our culture. We expect women to do things we would never expect men to do. And putting the men in high heels puts that into high relief.

"When we were Off-Broadway, a lot of women told me it was the most feminist show playing in New York at the time."

Pageant has been produced on London's West End and at regional theaters all over the world since its days as an off-Broadway smash in the early '90s. The show was actually born in Boston, in a roundabout way. The story goes that a group of dancers, on a national tour of 42nd Street in the '80s, staged an impromptu beauty pageant at their hotel during their Boston run. The ad hoc performance was videotaped, and one of the dancers passed the tape on to Russell.

"I wasn't into drag," Russell says, recalling his initial skepticism. "And I think beauty pageants have been satirized a lot. But the video was hilarious. I was on the floor. These guys were Broadway gypsies so they were much more talented than most pageant contestants actually are."

Inspired, Russell got to work with musician Albert Evans and writer Frank Kelly on fleshing out the thin idea of male beauty queens into a full show. "We thought it would be great if it was an actual contest, so we came up with the idea of selecting five judges from the audience each evening. And they actually vote, so at the end you never know what's going to happen."

Of course the show is tightly rehearsed. Russell should know; he's directing the Stoneham production, marking his fifth time directing the show. Hinting that some of the previous venues were less than ideal, he notes with a laugh, "this is the least challenging space I've had to do the show in. It's a real theater and it's just the right size."

Besides being Stoneham Theater's first drag show, er, first cross dressing musical satire, Pageant will be the first time the company reaches out to the LGBT community. The Sept. 13 performance has been dubbed Out at Stoneham, and members of the gay community are invited to a reception with members of the cast.

"We've been batting this idea around for a while," notes Symes, "and this show is a natural to get started. If not now, when?"

Pageant runs Tuesdays through Sundays, from Sept. 11 through Oct. 5, at 395 Main St., Stoneham. Tickets $20-$40. Info: 781.279.2200 or www.stonehamtheatre.org