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Hell in a Handbag Productions ends their current season with “Queen for a Day,” a “comedy/drama/cry for help” based on the lives of prominent fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, “very sane normal person” Liza Minnelli, and the Queen Elizabeth I. Playwright Tyler Anthony Smith impressed with last year’s camp-musical “Poor People!” and here switches gears to pen this deeply intimate work with the absurd premise: Elizabeth traveling through time to contract Halston to design her funeral gown. Director Stephanie Shaw (also director of “Poor People!”) again matches Smith’s farcical energy, and the seventy-five-minute one-act play spans the length of the theater, with characters running back and dodging mounds of garbage, one of them splattered in blood.
Nothing in “Queen for a Day” happens as one would expect. The play begins with Halston brooding silently in the corner of his swanky high-rise apartment, wearing a black turtleneck, tight white pants and opaque sunglasses. As the audience filters in, he moves not an inch, a preview of Will Lidke’s adept portrayal of a narcissistic, cocaine-fueled hipster racked by self-doubt. Like an apparition, Queen Elizabeth I floats into the room, dressed in a lavish gown, her face ghost-like under a layer of bone-white Venetian ceruse. She proclaims that she is dying—but not until she has a killer outfit in which to die in. Smith plays Elizabeth with an air of innocence that belies subtle wisdom, and during the dressmaking process the two connect over tribulations from the past. Smith’s script oscillates between biting satire and moments of surprising vulnerability: one minute, the Queen is railing against having her measurements taken, the next, Halston is unspooling memories of Studio 54’s decadent nights.
And then there’s Liza! Bursting in from out of nowhere, Liza Minnelli is portrayed by Dakota Hughes to perfection, capturing the “Queen of Broadway”’s signature pixie-style haircut, wide and dark-rimmed eyes, nasally voice, eclectic mannerisms and Brooklyn accent. In one explosive scene, Liza puts together an entire Broadway revue (in between snorts of cocaine), painting herself as the Statue of Liberty awaiting the love of her life, the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and singing a medley of showtunes and pop hits while leaping over furniture. It’s quite a trip! Why is Liza there? Who knows! And who cares, because these sudden appearances not only fit the absurd nature of the play but are so outrageously funny that they could satisfy as a show in themselves.
“Queen for a Day” thrives on a kind of elegant chaos, where glamour and grief collide. The cast’s commitment to both buffoonery and pathos ensures that the absurdity never fully eclipses the beating heart at center stage. Under Shaw’s assured direction, the play’s feverish pace finds room for moments of unexpected tenderness, affirming that beneath the wigs and wit, the characters yearn for legacy, connection and a little bit of immortality.
“Queen for a Day” is presented by Hell in a Handbag Productions through August 3 at Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 North Clark. Tickets are $34 (VIP reserved $43), available at handbagproductions.org.
