BY DAVID NOH | It’s incredible, but Lypsinka, that whirling dervish of illusion and the highest imaginable camp — whom I consider as essential a New York figure as the Statue of Liberty — hasn’t been on a local stage in nine years.
This has been happily remedied with “Lypsinka! The Trilogy,” running through January 3 at the Connelly Theater. It consists of three separate show revivals: “Lypsinka! The Boxed Set,” in which she plies the kaleidoscopic, scrupulously curated sound bytes that made her a star; “The Passion of the Crawford,” in which she hypnotically recreates the one and only Joan; and the autobiographical “John Epperson: Show Trash,” in which she appears, speaks, and sings as himself.
I sat down to chat with this formidable, indestructible star at one of his favorite Chelsea haunts, Le Zie, and just had to ask him the most important of questions: Who was his favorite star — Dolores Gray, whose fabulously bombastic gestures and surreally exotic look surely inspired Lypsinka, or the ever-enduring Crawford?
“I don’t have a favorite star,” Epperson said, “but Crawford remains fascinating to me. As she got older, I see her as a sad figure, not because of Christina and the wire hangers, but just the stuff she put herself through to survive in Hollywood. There’s something kind of tragic and vulnerable about her which I see in her eyes the more I watch her. She keeps evolving.”
I remember going to the original production of “The Passion,” and a drunken old bear of a queen was sitting in front of me, slugging straight liquor from a big paper cup and cackling hysterically at everything. When he turned around, it was Stephen Sondheim. I asked him if he’d ever met Crawford and he replied tersely, “No. Never met her. Nope!”
John and I both know, however, that the song “I’m Still Here” was inspired by her, and Epperson said, “I’m hoping he will come because it’s altered over the years and become deeper and richer. He is a movie fan and really is crazy about Joan Crawford. I emailed him not too long to say I finally saw [her 1928 film] ‘Our Dancing Daughters,’ and he replied, ‘What have you been doing your whole life?,’ because to him, that’s something I should have seen a long time ago.
“I had the idea to do all of this 10 years ago but had to wait on the money. For this, we have to thank a man named Gerry Herman, not the composer, but an American man I met in 2010 in Paris, at the Café de Flore. I was there with a former assistant of Karl Lagerfeld’s, Gilles Dufour. He and Karl are on the outs, so I was afraid that Karl would be there, too, but he said, ‘Darling, I don’t care.’ I met Gerry there, and we were chatting and he said, ‘Wait a second, you’re Lypsinka. Why are you here?’ I said, ‘I would love to perform here and have come here to meet people.’ He said, ‘I’m going to get behind you,’ and he has, my very first real angel.”
I asked Epperson how he came to create Lypsinka and he said, “I had two older sisters, and the older of them was so imaginative and would think up things for her younger siblings. We had a recording with Jayne Mansfield on the cover in a black cat suit on all fours, even though she didn’t sing on the record. It was pop 1950s songs like ‘Sweet Old Fashioned Girl’ and ‘You Gotta Have Heart,’ and my oldest sister started moving her mouth to the record and my mother loved it. She called it pantomime and would be our audience.
“When I got to college in Jackson, Mississippi, I went to the gay bars and the drag queens were lip-synching, doing what I saw my sisters do. That’s when I started getting the germ of an idea, and I also saw a review of Charles Ludlam’s ‘Camille.’ I thought, ‘Wait a second. He’s in drag and in Time magazine, and that’s the difference: you have to be in New York.
“I came here in 1978 and one of the first things I saw that weekend was Divine in ‘The Neon Woman’ at Hurrah. Then I saw Ludlam’s ‘Camille’ and thought, ‘How can I make my mark, unique but rooted in some sort of gay performance tradition?’ I needed to come up with a name that tells the audience I have a sense of humor. I saw the Richard Avedon show at the Metropolitan and there were photos of Veruschka, Dovima, one-name fashion models. Well, I’m tall and skinny, too, so what if I am this one-name fashion model Lypsinka, who has a sense of humor about herself and tells the audience what they’re gonna see?
“There was also a deeper psychological reason, which was that I had the desire to be on stage, but was also filled with fear of exposing myself. So, if I could hide behind someone else’s voice. And that has been the conundrum of my career, because a lot of people think I can’t do anything but lip-synch.”
I saw New York City Opera’s revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” in which Epperson stole the show with his aristocratic, nigh-Restoration comedy elegance: “I spoke in my own voice and sang the songs and thought surely someone will take me seriously as an actor and say how we can use the name Lypsinka to market another show, without being the Lyp. I thought, ‘I’m going to get offers and I didn’t.’ That was in 2004, a big year, with the movie ‘Kinsey,’ in which I appeared, playing across the street from Lincoln Center, eight pages in Paris Vogue, but nothing happened.
“Fortunately, being onstage doesn’t totally feed my identity. I’m very happy being an audience member but now I don’t go to theater because the audiences are so awful. I’m an audience at home, I watch movies and just saw ‘I Can Get It for You Wholesale,’ so there are Susan Hayward movies I have never seen. I’m perfectly happy, reading books and going on my Vermont trips every summer. I have a whole network of friends there. It’s so quiet, no tourists bombarding you and pushing strollers. The air is fresh and when I first went there, my friend said, ‘Here in Vermont, there’s valium in the air,’ because everyone was so relaxed. It’s only on the surface though. There are lots of angry poor people there, also.”
THEATER
LYPSINKA! THE BOXED SET
THE PASSION OF THE CRAWFORD
and
JOHN EPPERSON: SHOW TRASH
In rotating repertory
Through Jan. 3, 2015
At the Connelly Theater
220 E. Fourth St. (btw. Aves. A & B)
General Admission: $45 for one show, $80 for two, $105 for all three
Premium Admission (reserved seating, plus beverage): $60 for one show,
$100 for two, $125 for all three
Purchase tickets at 866-811-4111
Lypsinka.com
