Playwright Ronnie Larsen on his 1995 comedy-drama Making Porn:
The first preview was sold-out.
The reviews were horrible.
More sold-out shows.
Everytime a bad review came out our ticket advance grew.
Hopefully this good review won’t kill ticket sales at the new 48-seat Empire Stage theater in Fort Lauderdale, where a current production of Making Porn runs Thursdays to Sundays through Feb. 7.
Making Porn first played South Florida in 1998 at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road. 1980s gay porn icon Ryan Idol starred as Jack Hawk, a straight out-of-work actor who quietly takes a job in a gay porn film and reluctantly becomes a star.
Casting Idol in the star role caused a minor sensation on South Beach and the month-long run at the 400-seat Colony regularly sold out. (Making Porn contains much male frontal nudity and several simulated sex scenes.)
As gay-porn fans know, however, their Idol never was the world’s greatest actor.
The current Empire Stage production is well acted, and well directed.
New York-based actor David R. Gordon stars as Jack, a part he first played during Making Porn’s national tour in the late ‘90s. Gordon – a legitimate actor, the show’s producer and also new owner of Empire Stage theater – knows the material well and appears quite comfortable with the adult situations that arise onstage.
Julia Clearwood, a mainstay at Fort Lauderdale’s old Sol Theatre Project (where Empire Stage is now located), plays Jack’s wife, Linda, who at first becomes sick to her stomach upon learning her husband makes a living having video sex with other men.
Gordon and Clearwood work well together and are quite believable in their scenes together.
Actors Keith Dougherty and Michael Lopez (also the production’s director) are Making Porn veterans. Both appeared in the show’s 1998 South Beach production with Ryan Idol. They play their parts as boyfriends/porn filmmakers with energy and conviction; neither walks through his role.
The two cast surprises are Ryan McFadden, who plays a 20-year-old porn hopeful, and Angel Perez, who co-stars as longtime porn star Ray Tanner.
McFadden starts off a bit goofy but soon shows an endearing comic flair.
Perez has the hardest job of all, not having his acting talents obscured by performing the most explicit scenes in the play. Let’s just say it’s a close shave, but Perez manages to pull it off. His Ray Tanner (a role often played by real-life porn stars) is human and – just one more double entendre, please – fleshed out.
Making Porn is not for everyone. Some will find it too explicit, others not explicit enough. But for the sold-out audience on Saturday night, Ronnie Larsen’s play was just right.
ROLLING WITH LAUGHTER: 'ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES' CAMPS UP 1950S MOVIE MELODRAMA AND DELIVERS.
by Rod Stafford Hagwood
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, January 30, 2009
Those weepy “women’s movies” of the 1950s – a sub-genre overripe for the plucking – inspire the play by Garet Scott.
Roll With the Punches opens with Mark Finley as the wheelchair-bound Susan Evans, the lady of a San Franciso manor. Still got Jane Wyman in your head? OK, now imagine her played by Rock Hudson. But like his drag dropplganger Charles Busch, Finley confines his comedic performance to channeling movie melodrama rather than cross-dressing shtick. Mugging enthusiastically for a nonexistent camera, Finley’s Evans is all gnashed teeth, arched eyebrows, trembling lips, side-of-the-mouth slurs.
Evans worries about her children: a son Marshall (Jeremy Beazlie) who thinks solely of cooking and ball gowns and daughter Millicent (Jamie Heinlein) who is more suited for the red light district than stately home. Susan Evans’ philandering husband, the world famous neuro-surgeon Dr. John Evans (pitch-perfect, scene-stealing David R. Gordon) berates her for her hysterical paralysis before hiring a socially ambitious nanny Penelop Raintree.
Played by author Scott, Raintree is determined to become the second Mrs. Evans. After Susan is “accidentally” sent whizzing down Nob Hill into San Fransisco Bay, the only real threat to Raintree’s scheming is Nellie, the Irish maid who is played by each member of the cast courtesy of an apron with an attached gravity-impaired bountiful bosom.
But that’s just the frame; the real art is in suspending the laughs after intermission.
Let’s face it, Carol Burnet would have wrapped this up in-between commercials.
If you’re willing to overlook the thrift store set and the almost-right costumes, then the cure for whatever ails you is in the ham being served up at Rising Action.
Rod Stafford Hagwood can be reached at
rhagwood@SunSentinel.com