TAVEL, Ronald.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

"Gorilla Queen", original playbill. A rare original mimeograph program for the inaugural production of the 1960s sensation Gorilla Queen, an outrageous, ridiculous, shamelessly queer Off-Off-Broadway production which scandalized and titillated the theatrical establishment.The play ran at Judson Poet's Theatre from 10 March until 1 April 1967. It proved so popular that it was sold to the Martinique Theatre, where it ran from 7 April until 25 May. Tavel had already inaugurated his "Theatre of the Ridiculous" with Shower and The Life of Junita Castro in 1965, based on short screenplays he had written for Andy Warhol's early films. For Gorilla Queen, Tavel dredged Hollywood's 1940s jungle flicks to produce a salacious extravaganza in which "God is a homosexual gorilla, complete with sequinned nipples" (Sayre, p. 241). It predates Hair, another controversial musical of the sexual revolution, by several months.Directed by Lawrence Kornfield, Gorilla Queen left reviewers dazed, confused, and delighted. Dan Sullivan, writing for the New York Times, summarized, "Gorilla Queen is the avant-garde's Hellzapoppin - outrageous nonsense that impresses you with its energy even when you are doubting its sanity. What's under the surface? A native theatrical shrewdness on Mr. Tavel's part, first of all, that tells him how to extend nonsense for nearly three hours without getting stale... Mr. Tavel also has an enormous gusto for camp, of which Gorilla Queen may be taken as a kind of apotheosis".

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