BELLE REPRIEVE.

By Lois Weaver, Peggy

Shaw, Bette Bourne, and Precious Pearl.
Split Britches and Bloolips, The Club at
La Mama E.T.C., New York City. 22 February
1991.
Blanche DuBois Mitch
Belle
Reprieve Tennessee Williams Blanche

"I don't want realism," Blanche DuBois tells her deserting suitor,
Mitch, at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, "I want magic! ... I
don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be true." In Belle Reprieve, a
gender-bent deconstruction of Tennessee Williams's
play, the pedestrian truth Blanche abhors serves as a metaphor for
theatrical realism, while the magic she endorses becomes theatrical
experimentation. That theatrical realism oppresses women and that
antirealistic theatrical techniques appropriated from vaudeville,
musical theater, and lesbian and gay performance may liberate
women from the constraints inherent in the realistic form are
effectively demonstrated in this complex and extremely compelling
work.
Belle Reprieve is a collaboration between two (Peggy Shaw and Lois
Weaver) of the three members of New York's lesbian theatre
company, Split Britches, and Bloolips, the London-based troupe
comprised of female impersonators Bette Bourne and Precious Pearl.
The title, of course, is a pun on Belle Reve, the lost homestead of
Blanche and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, which, in turn, is
Williams's wordplay on the seductiveness of illusion, or Beautiful
Dreams. Belle Reprieve uses the iconicity of Williams's play (and,
more specifically, of Elia Kazan's 1951 film version) as a starting
point for a lively exploration of illusion, including the illusion of
coherent sexual identities,the illusion that is gender, and, most
importantly, theatrical illusion and the politics of dramatic realism.
Employing a myriad of theatrical devices (drag, tap dancing, torch
singing, stock vaudeville routines), the company takes its audience
on a fastpaced, nonlinear romp through the terrain of Williams's
play: compulsory heterosexuality, stereotypical gender display,
women, rape, and madness. Excerpting only a handful of Williams's
lines, Belle Reprieve exposes Streetcar's underlying tensions,
attractions, and sexual politics. For example, Peggy Shaw, who
portrays Williams's consummate representative of stereotypical
maleness, Stanley, as a muscle-flexing braggart, rummages through

the trunk of the frail, victimized Blanche, played (to the hilt) by drag
queen Bette Bourne. The scene, a direct reference to Streetcar, is
turned into a musical exegesis on drag. Shaw undoes her
suspenders, letting them hang from her waist, and removes her
button-down shirt, revealing an almost transparent, sleeveless Tshirt, through which the audience can see the contours of her
breasts. While singing "The Hokey-Pokey" ("I put my right hand in, I
take my right hand out"), Shaw reaches into Blanche's trunk, grabs
a pink evening gown on a hanger, and hangs it around her neck. It
swings from her neck as she moves. To this costume she adds a
rhinestone tiara, gold bangles, a handbag, stiletto heels, and pink
gloves from
Blanche's trunk. Looking the consummate drag queen, Shaw
promenades downstage, then turns her back on the audience and
walks upstage, revealing the backs of her T-shirt and trousers with
suspenders hanging. She then turns to the side, showing both
versions of drag at once. women from the constraints inherent in the
realistic
form are effectively demonstrated in this complex and extremely
compelling work. Belle Reprieve is a collaboration between two
(Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver) of the three members of New York's
lesbian theatre company, Split Britches, and Bloolips, the Londonbased troupe comprised of female impersonators Bette Bourne and
Precious Pearl. The title, of course, is a pun on Belle Reve, the lost
homestead of Blanche and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire,
which, in turn, is Williams's wordplay on the seductiveness of
illusion, or Beautiful Dreams. Belle Reprieve uses the iconicity of
Williams's play (and, more specifically, of Elia Kazan's 1951 film
version) as a starting point for a lively exploration of illusion,
including the illusion of coherent sexual identities, the illusion that is
gender, and, most importantly, theatrical illusion and the politics of
dramatic realism.
Employing a myriad of theatrical devices (drag, tap dancing, torch
singing, stock vaudeville routines), the company takes its audience
on a fastpaced, nonlinear romp through the terrain of Williams's
play: compulsory heterosexuality, stereotypical gender display,
women, rape, and madness. Excerpting only a handful of Williams's
lines, Belle Reprieve exposes Streetcar's underlying tensions,
attractions, and sexual politics. For example, Peggy Shaw, who
portrays Williams's consummate representative of stereotypical
maleness, Stanley, as a muscle-flexing braggart, rummages through
the trunk of the frail, victimized Blanche, played (to the hilt) by drag
queen Bette Bourne. The scene, a direct reference to Streetcar, is
turned into a musical exegesis on drag. Shaw undoes her
suspenders, letting them hang from her waist, and removes her
button-down shirt, revealing an almost transparent, sleeveless Tshirt, through which the audience can see the contours of her
breasts. While singing "The Hokey-Pokey" ("I put my right hand in, I

take my right hand out"), Shaw reaches into Blanche's trunk, grabs
a pink evening gown on a hanger, and hangs it around her neck. It
swings from her neck as she moves. To this costume she adds a
rhinestone tiara, gold bangles, a handbag, stiletto heels, and pink
gloves from
Blanche's trunk. Looking the consummate drag queen, Shaw
promenades downstage, then turns her back on the audience and
walks upstage, revealing the backs of her T-shirt and trousers with
suspenders hanging. She then turns to the side, showing both
versions of drag at once.
Womanliness as masquerade is further deconstructed in a
monologue performed by Weaver. She portrays Stella as a joyously
sexual woman, who desires both Stanley (played by a lesbian
playing a man who sometimes plays a woman) and Blanche (played
by a gay man playing a woman who, in turn, sometimes plays a
man). Dressed as an adolescent cheerleader, Weaver reminisces
about learning from her older sister Blanche how to refine her
womanly persona. The homoerotic relationship between Blanche
and Stella, latent in Kazan's film, is made explicit as Bourne joins
Weaver in a suggestive pom-pom routine and song entitled "Under
the Covers." Similarly, Belle Reprieve makes explicit the homoerotic
attraction between
Stanley and Mitch (the totally fey Precious Pearl). As the two men
compete in a physical armwrestling and verbal woman-slandering
match, Mitch blurts out his desire for Stanley. "Suck on me!" he
screams.
The production is fragmented. Scenes never directly parody
Streetcar, nor do they create a cohesive narrative of their own.
Toward the end, however, the raison d'etre for this style becomes
clear. Pearl's rendition of "The Man I Love" is almost reverent,
although he undercuts the seriousness of the song by
accompanying himself on the ukulele. Halfway through the song,
Shaw, Weaver, and Bourne enter, dressed as humansized paper
lanterns (lanterns are Blanche's means of turning the ordinary into
the magical). The lanterns sway to the music, and eventually they
break into an energetic tap dance. Mid-production number, Bourne
drops his lantern costume and cries, "Stanley, I can't bear it. I want
to be in a real play. What's wrong with a theme and a plot we can all
follow?" Weaver, dropping her lantern costume as well, reminds
Bourne that the company had decided that "as gays and women,
realism works against us."
Bourne, portraying the illusion-loving Blanche, insists that the
company abandon its "romp in the avant-garde" long enough to
complete the narrative of Streetcar. Just as Williams's Blanche meets
her tragic destiny by naming the reality of her rape by Stanley,
Bourne discovers that realism, in the case of A Streetcar Named

Desire (and, indeed, in western theatrical tradition), means that the

female character gets raped and goes crazy. Unlike Williams's
Blanche, however, Belle Reprieve's heroine
is saved by the intrusion of another theatrical device, the grand
finale. Weaver and Pearl enter singing, and without explanation or
resistance, Shaw and Bourne join them in a tap-dancing chorus line,
which is rapidly followed by a curtain call and
encore. Belle Reprieve powerfully suggests that realism, which
depends upon and perpetuates the myths of normative
heterosexuality and stable sexual
identities, does indeed work against women and gays. The
heightened theatricality of Belle Reprieve liberates the characters
from their roles and fates. It is also tremendous fun.