In 2019, Stephanie Davis directed the Evan Linder-Andrew Hobgood satire “5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche” for Theatre Conspiracy. She returns to the Alliance for the Arts to direct the show again this year because it’s such a good time for the audiences who see it.
“It’s a fun show,” Davis promised. “There’s no intermission. It’s a little over an hour. It originally debuted at another fringe festival in the United States, and you’re gonna laugh. You’re gonna enjoy it and you’re gonna have a blast.”
Part of the show’s humor comes from its continual stream of sexual innuendo and double and triple entendres. As the title intimates, the show has something or other to do with quiche.
“It’s about five women who are officers of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein,” Davis noted. “They get together every year for a quiche breakfast, and this time the stakes are higher because there may or may not be an atomic bomb that they have to deal with.”
Another of this production’s many strengths is its all-star cast.
Lucy Sundby, Karen Goldberg and Anna Grilli reprise their roles from five years ago. They are joined this is time around by Shelley Sanders and Madelaine Weymouth.
As an added bonus, Alliance and Uncommon Friends directors Molly Rowan Deckart and Marc Collins will be serving up some homemade quiche to benefit their respective organizations.
“Just come out to the Alliance. Support the arts,” Davis urged. “Support these five amazing women, and just have some quiche and have some fun."
THE BACKGROUND:
The play is set in 1956, before the women’s movement and during a time when everyone was on edge about the Russians and the threat of nuclear war.
As the show unfolds, the women extol the glories of the egg (read “ova”) while indulging the sapphic allusion to quiche-eating. But as the assembled “widows” await the announcement of the society’s prize-winning quiche, atomic bomb sirens sound. Has the Communist threat come to pass? How will the “widows” respond as their idyllic town and lifestyle faces attacks?
The show has flourished and endured because it contains saliant observations about societal pressures to conform, the nature of repression and the universal quest to be who we are and love who we choose.
Since its debut in 2012, “5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche” has gone on to attain cult status.
It has also received considerable critical acclaim:
- “I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche,’ like ‘The 39 Steps,’ becomes a mainstream favorite of theater troupes around the country…skillfully, lovingly, and deliciously prepared.” – Chicago Stage Standard
- “Expanded from an award-winning sketch, this wonderfully ridiculous scenario delivers what it promises. This ensemble piece is smart, sharp and hysterically funny.” – Time Out Chicago
- “A delectable portrait of sublimated Sapphism…[‘5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche’] dishes up high-spirited theatrical comfort food with a bit of a saucy kick.” – Chicago Tribune
- “The bitingly funny story of friendship, pastry and forbidden love has the audience in stitches.” – Vancouver Sun
While it originated in Chicago, the Andrew Hobgood and Evan Linder dark comedy won honors as Best Overall Production at the 2012 NYC International Fringe Festival.
Like “5 Lesbians,” many popular and successful shows debuted in fringe.
A case in point is “Six:The Musical,” which is currently blowing the roof off the Lena Horne Theatre. If that weren’t enough, the Grammy Award-nominated first-ever live recording, “Six: Live on Opening Night,” has enjoyed tens of thousands of downloads on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and Amazon Music, and is now available as a CD as well. “Six” got its start in 2017 at Edinburgh Fringe when a group of Cambridge University students put on a musical in a 100-seat hotel conference room that imagined Henry VIII’s wives as a 21st Century girl group. They wrote the script in less than two hours!
Cypress Lake Center for the Arts performed “Six” to sell-out crowds in April and North Fort Myers High will produce the show in October.
“The Drowsy Chaperone” (Bob Martin and Don McKellar) premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 1999 and went on to Broadway in 2006. It was produced locally by Fort Myers Theatre this past February/March and by Creative Theater Workshop in 2020.
“Da Kink in My Hair” (Trey Anthony) was part of the 2001 Toronto Fringe Festival before going on to enjoy successful runs in the U.S. and U.K. along with a Global TV series that ran from 2007 to 2009, and “My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding” (David Hein and Irene Sankoff) debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2009 before going on to enjoy an extensive North American tour.
Locally, Naples playwright and veteran actor Frank Blocker won Best-in-Venue honors at last June’s 2nd Annual Fringe Fort Myers for “Stabilized Not Controlled,” a 60-minute comedic tour de force in which he plays 17 different characters, and which he reprised as a benefit on August 30th to help the Alliance make up some of the budget shortfall that resulted from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ arts funding veto.
As for performers who were “discovered” at fringe, Emma Thompson (the only person to ever win an Oscar for both writing and acting), Hugh Laurie, Robin Williams, Mike Myers, Rachel Weisz (who won an Oscar for her role in “The Constant Gardener” and became a cult phenom in the role of Evelyn Carnahan in “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns”) and former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah all got their start at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.