INTERVIEW: ‘Ginger Twinsies’ is the new ‘Rocky Horror’
Photo: Ginger Twinsies features, from left, Russell Daniels and Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by Vivacity Media Group with permission.
NEW YORK — Ginger Twinsies, the hilarious sendup of the 1998 film The Parent Trap, is currently running at the legendary Orpheum Theatre in the East Village. The show is a madcap retelling of a story that involves two girls who don’t know they are identical twins — that is, until they meet up at summer camp. Then, the sisters join forces and decide to switch their places, with one heading toward their father’s family and the other heading toward their mother’s family.
The original film starred Lindsay Lohan, Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid. The parody in New York City stars Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds as the twins, plus Jimmy Ray Bennett, Lakisha May, Grace Reiter and Phillip Taratula, among others.
Bennett, who recently performed in the Encores! production of Wonderful Town, plays the character of Martin, plus many others during these quick 80 minutes.
“Every audience has their own personality,” the actor said in a recent phone interview. “It’s interesting to see what houses go for and what other houses go for. … There’s an Imelda Staunton joke that a lot of times the audience is like, ‘Oh, OK,’ and then every now and then, there’ll be an audience that dies over that joke. And then you’ll see that they die over more jokes like that, that are more referential, that are deep cuts. You have some people that come that are obsessed with the film and so laugh at every reference when it comes to that. Then you have audiences that you can tell they’re not really the most familiar with the film, and so they laugh at a completely different set of jokes.”
The jokes come a mile a minute, and as Bennett said, there are many pop-culture references throughout the intermissionless play. Ginger Twinsies is definitely the type of off-Broadway show where one has to strap in and simply go for the ride.
One of the earliest adventures for the cast and crew was to have some actors perform the original screenplay in a theater in Brooklyn. If they received some laughs, perhaps there was something they could do to build a full parody, at least that was the thought of Kevin Zak, who wrote and directed the piece.
“We read the original screenplay in a place called Littlefield in Brooklyn, and it was part of something they were doing out there,” Bennett said. “We just read the original screenplay straight from the movie … but there was such a huge audience reaction to people just coming to see the screenplay, people dressing up in costumes, people who knew every word of it. And I think that’s where Kevin got the idea — ‘Oh, I think we need to go a little further with this and make our own version of it because there are people who it’s such a cultural milestone for them, or they watched it over and over.'”
Eventually Bennett watched the film as well and became obsessed. He said Lohan is an absolute star in the movie, and he hopes that one day she will come down to the Orpheum and take part in the poking fun.
Although Ginger Twinsies stands out as a unique show in Bennett’s résumé, he does liken the experience to his early days in improv comedy. “Three of us had a show called The Nuclear Family,” he said. “It was when I first got to New York, and it was a very popular improv show. We created a show out of nothing every night, and we became kind of a cult downtown hit. It’s different because this is scripted, but it’s giving me that feeling of being downtown, being in the East Village, being at the Orpheum, which is iconic. But nothing to where people have references coming in. It’s like Rocky Horror in the sense that they’re waiting for certain things to be said or done.”
Bennett added: “To be honest, our 9 p.m. shows are when people come from the bar a little bit. They’re wild. The kind of energy exchange, it took us a while to figure out how to get through the show because there was such a give and take with the audience, and we don’t have microphones. And it’s like, OK, they’re laughing so much that we can’t even hear each other, so it’s been an adjustment for all of us to kind of ride the wave of the audience and figure out how to navigate it. That’s such an amazing problem to have.”
After the show begins, there is almost no time to take a breath for Bennett and the company. He needs to go, go, go for more than an hour, running around on stage and backstage.
“I think now it’s in our bodies,” he said. “When we first started, we were exhausted. It’s like an hour and 20, but it’s a marathon. Everything’s fine on stage, and then you go backstage, and you’re like, OK, where do I change? Where do I run? Where do I get this prop? There are ladders and stairs. None of our dressing rooms are on the same level, so it’s also navigating the backstage. But now I think we got it in our bodies. Also, for me, I am kind of keyed up after the show, especially after two. All right, let’s go have a conversation. It takes a minute to kind of get it out of your system.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Ginger Twinsies, featuring Jimmy Ray Bennett, continues at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village. Click here for more information and tickets.
