The Miss Vagina Pageant

By Rhonda Shumway
7/18/91

It's classic American pastime. ComiskeyPark, David Berg Hot dogs. Old Style beer and ...beauty pageants.

It's also the perfect situation to make loud, raucous, obnoxious, hoot-hollerin', boot stompin' fun of, and that's exactly what sisters Faith and Jill Soloway do with this play. They've written, directed, produced, played piano and keyboards as well as MC'd and engineered their way through this hilarious pageant-mania, set in Chicago.

There are five contestants and last year's Miss Vagina-a dyed-blonde, bombshell-turned-gin-drinking idiot-taking turns on stage showing us that this is a pastime better left behind. While there is no Burt Parks, there are five of the funniest, whacked-out women, acutely personifying their bigger than life, bigger than the state of Texas, characters.

Miss South Side of Chicago, played by the tall, lanky, Beth Cahill, is a gum-snapping, belly-button showing, holes in her jeans dish-water blonde. Miss Tennessee (Melanie Hutsell) is the loud cowgirl with pigtails and the biggest, gooiest saucer eyes you've ever seen. Miss New York (Susan Messing) is a black woman who talks with a hard-core Long Island accent. Miss Pennsylvania is nauseatingly sweet and over-acted quite well by Kate Flannery. Finally, the sexy, Charo-like Miss Trinidad & Tabago (played by Charo lookalike Becky Thyre) brings up the rear of this quintuplet.

Join the hopeful contestants as they partake of those goofy musical revues. Listen to their incessant backstage chatter. Watch the mandatory slide show of the girls touring Grant Park and the tourist traps there-including tripping over a dead corpse in the park. Oh my!

As the week of the pageant progresses, the girls come closer together, toy with lesbianism, deal with past and present addictions, personality clashes and, finally a look into the mirror of despair realizing the sham and scam behind the pageantry institution.