About the Play:

Die Mommie Die! is a full-length dark satire by Charles Busch, the genius campmeister who has been called "a first-class satirist and farceur" (The New Yorker). Die Mommie Die! is a comic melodrama that evokes the 1960's "Grand Guignol" films that starred iconic, aging, female icons such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Lana Turner.

Die Mommie Die! follows the meltdown of a successful Hollywood family, in which Mommie does her loving best to bring out the worst in everyone. Ex-pop singer, Angela Arden is trapped in a hateful marriage with film producer Sol Sussman. Desperate to find happiness with her younger lover, an out of work TV actor, Tony Parker, Angela murders her husband with the aid of a poisoned suppository. In a plot that reflects Greek tragedy as well as Hollywood kitsch, Angela's Elektra-like daughter, Edith, convinces Angela's emotionally disturbed son, Lance, that they must avenge their father's death by killing their mother. From there more murder, mayhem and hilarity ensue. A surprising twist ending has all of the Sussman family's dirty laundry aired out for once and for all. Angela or rather Aunt Barbara realizes that happiness cannot be built upon a foundation of lies and turns herself in to the police.

Die Mommie Die! was first produced in 1999 at the Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles. Die Mommie Die! gained cult status within the LGBT community after a film version was released in 2003, with author Busch starring as Angela Arden alongside such notable actors as Jason Priestly, Frances Conroy, and Natasha Lyonne. Since then the play has been produced widely at professional theatres across the US, including a revival Off-Broadway in 2007 at New World Stages in New York City, and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Irresistibly evil! Die Mommie Die! ... is infused with the good-natured comic brio that has made Mr. Busch a drag artist whom middle America can embrace. Even theatergoers who don't catch the copious old-movie quotations, verbal and physical, should enjoy Mr. Busch's hair-trigger comic timing and rubbery mugging, which brings to mind vintage Lucille Ball... [Mr. Busch has] an encyclopedic knowledge of, and bone-deep affinity for, the late-career films of Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Susan Hayward, as well as a host of B-picture actresses who rarely surface on Netflix." — New York Times

"Thanks to Busch's script and exceptional leading perf, the surfaces of this comedy-thriller - about the murderous meltdown of the pre-Nixon Hollywood family - roll back to reveal provocative statements about the power women can lose when a man walks into the room." — Variety

"Busch has written a delightful story, sending up Hollywood of old and turning several genres on their head in the process ... each member of the company gets more than one chance to shine (and steal scenes)." — The Epoch Times

"Wickedly fun." — The New Yorker

About the Playwright:

Charles Busch is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He is the author of the award-winning Broadway play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, and Our Leading Lady. He starred in such plays as The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which ran for five years Off-Broadway. In 2003, Busch received a special Drama Desk award for career achievement as both a performer and a playwright.