John Epperson :: Not A Drag Queen, But Is Lypsinka

Whatever else John Epperson may be, he is not a drag queen. The mopey Morrissey spent three pages of last year's autobiography praising Lypsinka, Epperson's stage persona. "Is it a drag show?" he asks. "No. It is above and beyond: part Dal�, part Cocteau."

Epperson himself recently told EDGE he didn't like the term: "'Drag queen' can be used disparagingly. I prefer to think myself like Barry Humphries as Dame Edna."

Rather than just an alter-ego, like Humphries, Epperson has used Lypsinka to form an innovative form of theater that uniquely his own. In nearly a quarter of a century, Epperson began presenting his nights of lip-synched iconic Hollywood actresses that have not only brought him adulation from serious theater critics from L.A. to London, but put him on the runway for designers like Valentino and Thierry Mugler; appeared in ads for everything from the Gap to Naya Spring Water; and even performed in the window of Bergdorf Goodman.

A head-spinning experience

On stage, Lypsinka is a head-spinning theater experience that has audiences roaring while presenting a coherent work of art that has inspired doctoral theses.

It sounds simple: Epperson edits lines of movie dialogue and stitches them together. But in the age of YouTube, it's difficult to understand the amount of time and the craft that goes into renting dozens of movies, painstakingly looping magnetic to the precise second and then recording it.

"I would go to record stores (remember those?) and get the videotapes," he recalls. "If I was watching a movie and heard a line, I would write in a notebook the movie, the line and digital readout. It was very time consuming."

Lypsinka herself is seemingly the embodiment of the perfect American woman: sophisticated, polished, self-assured. As the evening goes on, she loses her cool in a welter of confusion that leads to the doorstep of psychosis.

Liz Taylor's confessions in "Butterfield 8" are the clay materials that form the play's statue: "That man taught me more about evil than any 13-year-old girl should ever know/You haven't heard the worst of it: I loved it;" "I was a slut, Mama. I was the slut of all time." In Epperson's expert hands, these lines make Lypsinka the modern Everywoman, the screaming Id beneath the Super Ego of society's relentless expectations and unforgiving internal contradictions.

Inspired by Hollywood

Morrissey gets it just right when he describes Lypsinka as Eileen Heckart (no doubt thinking of her Oscar-nominated alcoholic basket case in "The Bad Seed"), Lucille Ball and Barbara Billingsley "in mid-seizure." He's also on target (if a bit harsh) when he compares Epperson to "the clod-hop world of dopey drag." It's much closer to John Kelly's Joni Mitchell or Joey Arias' Billy Holiday or Charles Busch's riffs on Greer Garson; more performance art than foul-mouthed drag cabaret.

Like so many creative geniuses, Epperson grew up in a small town so far away from Lypsinka's glamor queens it might as well as have been the Moon. He eventually made his way to New York in 1978. The bankrupt city may have been going down the tubes, but it was heaven for artistic ferment, especially the anarchic petri dish growing Downtown in theaters from Greenwich Village to the far reaches of the Lower East Side.

That first summer in New York, Epperson immersed himself in the best of gender-fuck performers. He went to see Divine in "Neon Woman;" Charles Ludlam acting one of his landmark plays for the Ridiculous Theatrical Company; and Charles Pierce, the first female impersonator to become famous imitating Hollywood stars, most notably Bette Davis. All three shared one common thread: They were, in their own unique ways, inspired by, and performed as, legendary actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Obviously, Epperson has a real affection for the affected mannerisms and out-sized personalities these stars brought of their screen roles - especially, in Epperson's case, Joan Crawford, perhaps the biggest drama queen of them all.

3 Shows

He vigorously defends the way gay men had for decades worshipped at the altar of female Hollywood screen legends. "I think we needed them because we recognized in them things we saw in ourselves," he says.

That doesn't he believes that they have become irrelevant camp artifacts of the bad old days. "When I went to see 'Buyer & Cellar,'" Epperson notes, "this came up at talkback: With gay assimilation, do gays need these larger-than-life heroines anymore?"

Even so, he himself believes that it has become time to move on.

"I'm not using old material," he says. "I feel like I've done it. I can't take it any further." He also notes the bland sameness that has overtaken performers and actresses these days. For every Lady Gaga, there are a gaggle of Katy Perrys.

That's why, he warns, Epperson's upcoming repertory at the Connolly Theater in the heart of the East Village is essential viewing for anyone who has not seen Lypsinka as well as those of us those who have: "They may be the last chance to see this."

One of the three nights Epperson will be performing is a classic Lypsinka montage, "Lypsinka! The Boxed Set"; another, "The Passion of the Crawford," recreates an onstage interview Crawford gave in 1973 that is quintessential Joan and John.

The third night, Epperson takes off the wig and lashes to step onto the stage as himself in "John Epperson: Show Trash," a memoir that will have Epperson playing piano, singing and reminiscing.

Overshadowed

Since the show premiered in Washington, D.C., Epperson has been refining it before at last presenting it in New York. It's not the first time audiences have heard Epperson's own voice, however. He played the Stepmother in a 2004 New York City Opera production of "Cinderella," for instance; and did cabaret at Birdland.

"It's been difficult to get people interested in it," Epperson confesses, "because the Lypsinka character has overshadowed me. Once you've seen a man in a dress," he complains, "no one wants to see you any other way."

Hence, the repertory schedule. But seeing him on his own is something fans should flock to rather than shun. Epperson's boyish-looking appearance belies a very serious, consummate theater professional with a long resume in various reaches of the performance arts. He's currently putting his talent to work on a collaborative book musical.

Epperson hopes younger gay men will understand and appreciate Lypsinka as part of a grand tradition - standing on the shoulders of giantesses, as it were. "There is a kind of history here," Epperson says, "and I hope they want to see me because of that."

"I haven't done a show in New York in nine years. There's a whole new crowd that has moved here in nine years," he says. If, in the brave new world of acceptance, acts like Lypsinka are threatened with extinction, it's all the more important to be a witness. Besides, it's one of the most hilarious and enjoyable nights in the theater anywhere.

>Lypsinka! The Trilogy runs November 5, 2014 to January 3, 2015 at the Connelly Theater, 220 E. Fourth St., New York, NY. For schedule, tickets and more information, visit the Lypsinka website.