Pearls Over Shanghai Extends At Hypnodrome Theater Thru 4/9/11

Thrillpeddlers happily announces that due to popular demand and sold-out houses, its award-winning production of PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI, San Francisco's longest-running Cockettes Musical Hit has been extended again for 2011 - January 22, thru April 9, 2011 (schedules vary - see below). What started as a two-month limited engagement in June 2009 will now play for almost TWO YEARS! PEARLS has unanimously received rave reviews from critics and audience alike. It's a phenomenon that keeps on growing. PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI plays Sat. 8 pm in January, and Fri. and Sat. at 8 pm in February, March & April (thru April 9, 2011). Thrillpeddlers' Hypnodrome Theatre is located at 575 10th Street, in SF. (Bryant & Division Sts.)

Tickets are $30 gen. admission or $35 for "Shock Boxes" and "Turkish Lounges**" and are available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/139143 or by calling 800/ 838- 3006

2011 Additional dates for PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI are:
January (Sat. 8 pm) Jan. 22 & 29
Febryary (Fri. 8 pm / Sat. 8 pm) Feb. 4/5, 11/12, 18/19, 25/26
March (Fri. 8 pm / Sat. 8 pm) March 4/5, 11/12, 18/19, 25/26
April (Fri. 8 pm / Sat. 8 pm) April 1/2, 8/9

Composer Scrumbly Koldewyn plays piano for all Pearls performances in the guise of Ilse, the propriortess of the whore house. San Francisco favorites Veronica Klaus, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and Leanne Borghesi are the local divas alternating in the role of Petrushka, first created by disco diva Sylvester in the original productions. Notable local performers in cast rotation are Michael Soldier, Arturo Galster, Steven Satyricon, Valentine, Birdie-Bob Watt Leigh Crow and Flynn DeMarco.

NEWS FLASH: VICE PALACE: The Last Cockettes Musical
coming to Hypnodrome - Spring 2011

Thrillpeddlers are now developing composer Scrumbly Koldewyn's revival of the gothic horror
extravaganza VICE PALACE: The Last Cockettes Musical. First performed during Halloween in 1972, VICE PALACE: The Last Cockettes Musical reunited DIVINE with other members of the recently disbanded troupe, The Cockettes and legions of their drug-crazed fans for a last hoorah on stage at The Palace Theatre in North Beach. VICE PALACE: The Last Cockettes Musical is based on Edgar Allen Poe's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (or more precisely the hallucinatory film version starring Vincent Price). In Thrillpeddlers full-length version of VICE PALACE: The Last Cockettes Musical, Scrumbly has retained and expanded much of the original score and incorporated hits from The Cockette repertoire along with several new songs. VICE PALACE:
The Last Cockettes Musical opens at The Hypnodrome in the Spring of 2011.
Show and cast details to be announced.

PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI
An original musical by Link Martin (book/lyrics) and Scrumbly Koldewyn (music), PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI is the centerpiece of Thrillpeddlers' 2nd annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival, and marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of The Cockettes, a gender-bending theatrical troupe who not only originated this show, but exerted a profound influence on the culture of our times, from the phenomenon of midnight movies to glitter rock stars (such as David Bowie and the New York Dolls) and their outrageous fashions. PEARLS is a psychedelic musical inspired bysin-soaked Old Shanghai and Busby Berkeley movie musicals from Hollywood's Golden Age.

PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI is a comic mock-operetta about white slavery, opium dens, and miscegenation set in the colorful world of 1937 Shanghai. Link Martin parts the bamboo curtain, his politics swept aside by his love of the mystery and intrigue of the Orient. Placing his story at the crossroads of good and evil, his exotic "old sin town" is filled with singing sailors, humorous whores, foolish immortals, handmaidens and henchmen, all taking their places in streets teeming with a mix of foreign aristocrats, opium addicts, and gangland slave-trade czars.

Stage Director for PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI is Thrillpeddlers' Russell Blackwood, and original Cockette and composer Scrumbly Koldewyn serves as Musical Director and accompanist. With a cast of over 20, costumes a-plenty, and a score of 24 original songs, this production is the most eye-popping and toe-tapping in the Hypnodrome's history, with the scent of intoxicating perfume, poisonous flowers, opium, and sex oozing from every scene.

Thrillpeddlers
Thrillpeddlers (www.thrillpeddlers.com) have been performing their unique brand of horror and fetish theatre in San Francisco since 1991. Under the direction of Russell Blackwood, Thrillpeddlers are continuously engaged in translating, adapting and producing classic plays from the infamous repertoire of Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol and producing other works inspired by the Grand Guignol. The company's SOMA performance venue, The Hypnodrome, is tailor-made for the specific needs of horror theatre, "lights-out" spook show spectacle, multi-act bills, and arts education programs for young people. Inaugurating The Hypnodrome with WELCOME TO THE HYPNODROME in 2004, Thrillpeddlers have gone on to produce wildly popular Grand Guignol bills including BLOOD BUCKET BALLYHOO, HYPNODROME HEAD TRIPS, FLAMING SIN, AUDACIOUS ARTEFACTS, THE TORTURE GARDEN (2009) HOT GREEKS, and PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI in both SF and NYC's HOWL Festival. Shocktoberfest!!, Thrillpeddlers' annual pageant of terror and titillation, is now in its 11th year and has become a San Francisco Halloween favorite. Prior to that the company's production history includes the American premiere of Clive Barker's FRANKENSTEIN IN LOVE, MONDO ANDRONICUS (selected Best of the 1997 S.F. Fringe Festival), a double-bill of THE MEDIUM and A CRIME IN THE MADHOUSE (in Pretoria, South Africa). Thrillpeddlers has won the Guardian's "Best of the Bay" and, SF Weekly's "Best of San Francisco" Readers' Choice for "Best Theatre Company". Thrillpeddlers Theatre Company received a coveted 2009 GOLDIE AWARD (Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery award) from the SF Bay Guardian! http://tiny.cc/Lafe5 Thrillpeddlers are also the purveyors of www.GrandGuignol.com the most complete source of Grand Guignol information on the Net.

**About Seating:
Pairs of patrons will surely enjoy Hypnodrome's Shock Box seats for two, which garnered
SF Weekly's "Best of San Francisco 2008" for "Best Bonus Theater Experience." These themed seats include sumptuous Turkish Lounges, as well as private boxes including "Heaven and Hell,
"The Pharaoh's Tomb," and "Padded Cell," which offer the same opportunity for illicit trysting that was once a feature of the Parisian Théâtre du Grand Guignol - with added special effects as a nod to the 1950s horror movie gimmicks of William Castle.

 

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