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Playwright Charles Busch Taps Neighborhood Roots for New Play

By Mary Johnson | August 22, 2011 1:12pm
The Tony-nominated playwright has written a new play set in Kips Bay.
The Tony-nominated playwright has written a new play set in Kips Bay.
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Will Ragozzino/Getty Images

KIPS BAY — Tony-nominated playwright Charles Busch has written a new play about an ornery actress named Olive, a ghost named Howard who lives in her mirror and a crew of irritating neighbors that constantly invade Olive’s space and force her to be social.

“Olive and the Bitter Herbs” is now playing at the Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street between Park and Madison avenues. Its cast includes five main characters—the ghost not included—who live in a Kips Bay apartment building.

The setting was not accidental. For Busch, who grew up just a few blocks away in Murray Hill, the neighborhood plays a central role in bringing the story to life.

Unlike other Manhattan neighborhoods, Kips Bay doesn’t have one defining aspect or feature, he said.

In Charles Busch's new play
In Charles Busch's new play "Olive and the Bitter Herbs," the five main characters live in a Kips Bay co-op building.
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James Leynse

“You can’t really pinpoint what’s the local color of Kips Bay,” said Busch, who has lived in the West Village for about 30 years. “I thought it’d be kind of funny if [the play] takes place in a kind of prosaic place.”

In the show, Busch uses the neighborhood as the butt of a few playful one-liners, he said.

“We have a great abundance of dry cleaners,” the actress playing Olive deadpans in describing Kips Bay at one point during the show.

But Busch also uses the streets and buildings of Kips Bay to give the show tinges of reality. His characters don’t walk just down the street, they walk down Second Avenue, he said.

“When you’re specific about time and place, it anchors things in a marvelous way,” Busch said.

“I just try to make it very real,” he added. “It’s the world I’ve always lived in.”

Busch was raised by his aunt on East 37th Street and Park Avenue. The apartment was nestled in this ambiguous in-between zone, Busch said, one that wasn’t quite glamorous uptown but not hip downtown, either.

Still, Busch holds a certain reverence for the area that he once called home.

“I’m very sentimental about Murray Hill,” Busch said. “It was the closest thing to a family home that I had.”

Busch, famous for dressing in drag to play female characters in several of his own shows, had his first major hit in the mid-1980s, with a short, campy skit titled “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” The show, which he first performed at an after-hours bar on Avenue C, ran for five years and is one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history, according to Busch’s website.

Busch has also written and starred in “The Lady in Question,” “Red Scare on Sunset” and “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” which ran for 777 performances on Broadway and earned Busch a Tony nomination for best play.

Recently, his play “The Divine Sister,” in which Busch plays the mother superior of a convent school, earned praise throughout its nine-month, Off-Broadway run that ended earlier this year. Ben Brantley of "The New York Times" called the show “Mr. Busch’s freshest, funniest work in years, perhaps decades.”

“I thought, ‘Oh boy, what happens when I show up again?’” Busch said with a laugh.

It turns out the critics haven’t been so kind this time around. Reviews for “Olive and the Bitter Herbs,” which is scheduled to run through Sept. 3, have been mixed, Busch said, but overall, he’s pleased with the response.

Although he is still strongly sentimental about Murray Hill, Busch doesn't spend much time around his old stomping grounds nowadays.

In fact, he has only ventured back once since his aunt passed away 10 years ago, Busch said, when his friends purchased an apartment directly above his aunt's old unit.

“I felt a little bit like Jackie Kennedy going back to the White House years later,” he said.

“I avoid [her] street because it’s filled with so many wonderful memories,” he added, “but it makes her loss very palpable.”