Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

The third story’s the charm, says Kathleen Turner’s manipulative, bourbon-soaked, screenwriter mother Peg, to her resistant, ungrateful son, Drew: the first is the genesis, the second is overdone, but the third always returns to the truth. And so it is in Charles Busch’s The Third Story, spinning three gloriously overwrought tales, complete with witches and firebirds, scientists and monsters, mob queens, mothers, sons and the unfortunate women that come between them.

Drew has run away from his LA mother and her movie-star coven to discover the father in Omaha, Nebraska that he never knew. He has also, to his mother’s chagrin, become a humble postman, desiring nothing more than to read in his free time and enjoy his newfound peace and quiet. Peg makes that scenario entirely impossible. Having hit a prolonged writer’s block, she desperately needs a collaborator for her next screenplay. She is in danger of being all washed up in Hollywood. But Drew knows exactly what his mother is trying to do, and wants nothing more than to be left alone. The more Peg pushes him, via a refillable bourbon glass, the more Drew refuses, and this sets off a firestorm of pettiness, spite and recriminations galore. With Kathleen Turner providing most of the brio, the sparring matches are great fun to watch, though Jonathan Walker’s Drew gives as good as he gets.

They find a common ground in stories, like one Peg used to tell Drew about the enchanted firebird, where a beautiful Russian princess (Sarah Rafferty) wants the man of her dreams but is too shy to woo him. She turns to a witch, Baba Yaga (Charles Busch) to help her, and the witch makes the princess a vivacious twin to help her out (a bit like Christian making a clone of himself, complete with personality and poetry, so he would no longer need the services of Cyrano).

Then there is the screenplay that Drew and Peg are writing, sporadically, between fights, concerning Queenie Bartlett (also Charles Busch) a dying mob queen who seeks out a rigid lady scientist Dr. Hudson (Jennifer Van Dyck, magnificent) to make a double of her to protect her son Steve Bartlett (also Jonathan Walker) when she’s gone. There is also the matter of the monster Zygote (Scott Parkinson, hilarious), a teeny, tiny mistake of Dr. Hudson’s, and the fetching Verna (also Sarah Rafferty), who is no match for Queenie, and easily rid of.

Sound complicated“ It isn’t. All of these plots not only intersect, they collapse on top of each other delightfully, and it all works because the writing is clever and the performances are all high-spirited and terrific. To say more would take away much of the joy of "The Third Story," and joy is the right word to describe the feeling of watching Mr. Busch. It’s not that he is so much missed when he is off the stage; it’s that one wishes he really did have a double, so he could be in scenes with himself as well as everyone else on the stage. His Queenie is a marvel, and mirrors Ms. Turner; both mothers are manipulative, controlling, and charming. There are other themes woven in, about children and independence, but truly, "The Third Story" is many stories all wrapped up in a big, pink, deliriously intricate bow (and speaking of bows, the costumes and accessories, by Gregory Gale, and wigs by Tom Watson, are divine). Go, and enjoy.