On Stage: She Said, He Synced

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WHEN LYPSINKA mouths the lyrics, "Things that once would raise an eyebrow, nowadays wouldn't faze your brow or my brow," one suppresses a little shudder at the evocation of Joan Crawford — paragon of old Hollywood, gay icon, abusive mother, eyebrows that could cut tin.

In "Lypsinka: The Passion of the Crawford," actor John Epperson nails the glamour and the horror of Hollywood's "mommie dearest" in a show that re-creates a 1973 Crawford interview.

"I find her interesting as a 20th-century icon that represents the best and worst of the American dream," says Epperson. "When Elvis and Marilyn were alive, we knew about their problems. But we didn't know about Joan Crawford's."

As Crawford, Lypsinka's brow is painted on about halfway up her forehead, with a red rowboat for lips. Epperson's performance might be called meta-drag. "A lot of my work — and I hate that phrase; it sounds so pretentious — is a comment on drag performance, which I think is quite an absurd thing." It's Epperson as Lypsinka as Crawford (formerly Lucille Fay LeSueur).

"One of the reasons I moved to New York was to see old movies," says Epperson.

"This was in 1978, before cable TV. I started thinking maybe there's a way to do a drag performance that has all those layers." Enter Lypsinka. Epperson's character has reinterpreted a number of fabulous women, but Crawford reappears periodically."I get sick of seeing drag performers protray Joan Crawford as a monstrous caricature. Some people who knew her said she was a very nice person," Epperson says, "and other people will say she was the biggest bitch who ever walked. Probably she was both of those things, a complex person."

So don't call it drag. "Some say Douglas Sirk's films were just melodrama, but some say it was also social satire," Epperson says. "When I started, I had no idea this was called postmodernism; I was just doing what I thought was funny and unique."

» Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW; through Feb. 25; 202-332-3300. (Dupont Circle)

This post was written by Express contributor Bob Massey
Photo courtesy the Studio Theatre