With some of the unparalleled stars of a staged reading of the ever-brilliant, never-fading Valley of the Dolls, at a benefit for the Alcott Center For Mental Health and Los Angeles LGBT Center Saturday night. I’m friends with a ton of the cast so it was a ball + 1000! Here with (L-R) Marissa Jaret Winokur as a seriously and hilariously hideous French-accented stewardess and Miss Steinberg, whose dialog actually included the word “Hairspray”, myself (as audience member), Laraine Newman as the narrator who constantly mispronounced Neely O’Hara as Nelly, and Alec Mapa who deserves an Acadamy Award as an exquisitely poised (and posed) lisping Anne Wells, like seriously the most laughing I’ve ever done at a character in my life! Also shout-outs to my pals Mo Gaffney as the brusk and boozy Bellamy, Sheryl Lee Ralph as the wig-bearing Helen Lawson, Steve Bluestein in the haughty and manly roles of Ted Casablanca and Claude Chardor, and my friend of 6000 years, Bruce Vilanch, as a spectacularly demure and curvy Jennifer North.
