"When I was a little girl, my daddy used to tell me inappropriate stories about Elvis Presley."
Imagine a world where Elvis is a pill-poppin', girl-chasin' woman and his gang of toadies, the Memphis Mafia, consists of a leggy brunette in a slinky gown, a ponytailed blonde in a tight angora sweater, and a gangly young girl with black sideburns. In writer/director Emily Rems's buoyant new comedy "Vulvis Presley," nothing is quite as you remember it--but it's so much fun, you won't care.
"Vulvis" begins with a young girl (a wonderful, wide-eyed Ami Young) listening to stories of her favorite '50s singer, whom her daddy (wryly played by Erica Herd) has remade into 'Vulvis'--a joyous female reflection of the late king of rock 'n' roll.
But this isn't the 'movie Elvis' he's describing: Using real stories told by the original Memphis Mafia, 'Vulvis' (a marvelous Joanne Cunningham) is shown as a swaggering, sex-crazed, pill-gulping lunatic with a taste for young girls who is also wracked with poor 'plumbing' and multiple substance-abuse issues. Playwright Rems does a terrific job exploring all the comic possibilities of Vulvis's buffoonish traits, but also deftly balances it with real poignancy, primarily through the daughter's view of her outsized icon.
The multi-tasking Mafia trio (played with incredible verve by the statuesque Kris Wiebe, a ponytailed Katherine Sanderlin and the sideburned Melissa Shimkovitz) act as confidante, security force and cleaning squad for the spiraling superstar, and, much like the real yes-men, are unable to control the singer's self-destructive tendencies.
The cast is uniformly excellent, with special mention to Shimkovitz, whose sharp comic timing makes the most of her slight role as a jittery sidekick. The only downside is the show's length--just under an hour--for which the subject, and the audience, seemed to want and deserve much more.