Hourglass Group has made its reputation in the theater by resuscitating difficult and even dubious material, such as Mae West’s play “Sex.” This company seems to be drawn to neglected past idioms and dusty, long-forgotten clichés; they seek to re-activate old, obscure sources in a way that flirts with camp and then drives right through it to get at something genuine. “The Beebo Brinker Chronicles” is a condensation of three lesbian paperback favorites from the fifties and early sixties by Ann Bannon, a Philadelphia housewife who wrote under a pseudonym. Her books seem to have acted as a lifeline for closeted lesbians of the time, and they provide perfect material for Hourglass. I haven’t read Bannon’s books, but I assume that co-playwrights Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman and director Leigh Silverman have done a delicate shaping job on the three stories, so that they run a tight, even breathless ninety minutes.
The actors in “Beebo Brinker” are all splendid, and they deserve praise for the variety of their inventiveness, especially blond, fine-boned Marin Ireland, who beautifully plays the difficult central role of Laura, a jittery, vulnerable girl who we see grow into a calm, tough adult. Bosomy Carolyn Baeumler, who plays three very different roles, including a hilariously seedy lesbian novelist, scores huge laughs with even the stupidest jokes. David Greenspan’s hipster queen role isn’t particularly worthy of his gifts, but he’s mesmerizingly weird as always, taking pauses when you least expect him to; he’s an expert at keeping an audience off-balance. These performers find a lot of laughs in Bannon’s stories of lesbian lust, love and frustration, but they continually hold onto the thread of pain running through the lives of the oppressed people they are playing. This is no small feat, and the play does not shy away from the fact that when people are oppressed, they don’t stay likable, crushed victims: they begin oppressing each other. They also retreat into a charged, sadomasochistic fantasy world, and several scenes in “Beebo” come straight out of a pulsating, compensatory sort of wish-fulfillment. That the many levels of this tricky subject stay distinct, funny and touching is a tribute to Hourglass and the unique place they have built for themselves in downtown theater.
