No Big Whoop

"That's my
line," protested Lypsinka before addressing the audience
directly: "She did that in every rehearsal, so I
wasn't surprised." Neither was I; I'd seen a
similar character-breaking bit done with more believability by
Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat in the 1999 revival of
Annie Get Your Gun

. (Yes, I'm that gay.)

Spoiler alert: Sylvia
and Leatrice ultimately decide to do the play. The end. Well,
sort of. During the first round of applause, Batt, Young, and
DuBail returned to the stage for a cheeky song-and-dance number
that repeated the lyric "the bitch is legendary." It
seemed like overkill until I realized something had to waste
time while the three stars changed into showstopping crimson
evening gowns for their curtain calls. Seizing one last
opportunity to steal focus, Lypsinka was quick to expose her
impressive gams.

Throughout the
performance, various subtle winks had been made to the audience
to suggest that (especially without Epperson's admirable
adaptation efforts) perhaps the reason
Legends!

never reached Broadway had more to do with a weak script than
with backstage bitchery; when referring to the
play-within-a-play's merits, characters would often break
the fourth wall to clarify, "Not this play, but the one
we're thinking about doing." In fact, I imagine that
the only reason no one ever outright bashed
Legends!

was because its playwright died in 1989 of AIDS-related
causes.

Yet somehow I don't
think the late Mr. Kirkwood would mind my summing up the
evening by paraphrasing a zinger from another sharp-tongued
diva of a certain age, Bette Davis, when she infamously
commented on rival Joan Crawford's demise: My mother always
taught me to speak good of the dead.
Legends!

is dead. Good.