No Big Whoop

The course of
Legends!

never did run smooth. A vehicle for two aging divas, James
Kirkwood's play centers on a pair of rival Hollywood
has-beens who are given an opportunity to star in a play
together (also called
Legends!

) in order to revive their careers. A true case of life
imitating art imitating life, the cattiness and bickering
between the actresses playing the parts became as bad backstage
as it was written on the page.

Originally presented as
a pre-Broadway tour in 1986 starring Carol Channing and Mary
Martin, it closed on the road before making it to New York.
Best known as a Tony-winning bookwriter for
A Chorus Line

, Kirkwood documented the delicious details of the disaster in
his book,
Diary of a Mad Playwright: Perilous Adventures on the Road
With Mary Martin and Carol Channing

.

Another pre-Broadway
national tour in 2007, this time starring former
Dynasty

costars Joan Collins and Linda Evans, also flamed out before
reaching the Great White Way. Collins later aired out the dirty
laundry of her off-stage battles with Evans in London's
Daily Mail

.

In a way, it
would've been somewhat disappointing had last Monday's
staged reading of the play at New York's Town Hall (a
benefit for Friends in Deed -- The Crisis Center for
Life-Threatening Illness) been drama-free. Here the lead roles
of Sylvia Glenn and Leatrice Monsee would be played by drag
legends Charles Busch and Lypsinka, with Whoopi Goldberg
appearing as Aretha, the sassy maid. Lypsinka's male alter
ego, John Epperson, had adapted the comedy for the reading, and
Mark Waldrop (who helmed Bette Midler's 1999 Divine
Millennium tour) was directing the event. I wouldn't have
missed this for the world.