Everett Quinton, a staple of New York’s post-1960s downtown theater scene and diligent standard-bearer for the outrageously campy and hilariously melodramatic style of performance known as the Ridiculous, died of glioblastoma January 23 in Brooklyn. He was 71.
The actor-director’s death was confirmed to The New York Times by friend Julia Campanelli speaking on behalf of his sister Mary Ann Quinton.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Billy Packer Dies: College Basketball Announcer Part Of 34 Final Fours Was 82 Related Story Lance Kerwin Dies: 'James At 15', 'Salem's Lot' Actor Was 62
Making his name in the Off (and Off Off) Broadway theater world initially with his partner in life and art, the actor, playwright and director Charles Ludlam, Quinton would star in numerous productions at the Greenwich Village playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, founded by Ludlam in 1967.
Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton,...
The actor-director’s death was confirmed to The New York Times by friend Julia Campanelli speaking on behalf of his sister Mary Ann Quinton.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Billy Packer Dies: College Basketball Announcer Part Of 34 Final Fours Was 82 Related Story Lance Kerwin Dies: 'James At 15', 'Salem's Lot' Actor Was 62
Making his name in the Off (and Off Off) Broadway theater world initially with his partner in life and art, the actor, playwright and director Charles Ludlam, Quinton would star in numerous productions at the Greenwich Village playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, founded by Ludlam in 1967.
Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton,...
- 1/27/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Like some strange brew blend of Veep, Noises Off and one of the late Charles Ludlam’s outrageously vulgar (and still sorely missed) Ridiculous Theatrical Company follies, Selina Fillinger’s all-female, star-packed political satire Potus: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive is an occasionally glorious mess of a farce, sometimes chaotically funny and other times as what-were-they-thinking?? goofy as the last segment of a Saturday Night Live episode.
If Potus, directed by Susan Stroman and opening today at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, never quite rises to the level of those three influences – not as darkly clever as Veep, as lightning quick as Noises Off nor as go-for-deliriously-broke as Ludlam – Potus barrels through its weaker stretches on the contagious enthusiasm and in-it-together vivacity of a crowd-pleasing cast.
With a mostly female creative team – Beowulf Boritt contributed the excellent rotating set of White House offices...
If Potus, directed by Susan Stroman and opening today at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, never quite rises to the level of those three influences – not as darkly clever as Veep, as lightning quick as Noises Off nor as go-for-deliriously-broke as Ludlam – Potus barrels through its weaker stretches on the contagious enthusiasm and in-it-together vivacity of a crowd-pleasing cast.
With a mostly female creative team – Beowulf Boritt contributed the excellent rotating set of White House offices...
- 4/27/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
When viewers tune into to “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” most don’t understand that they are getting a weekly lesson on queer history. With “Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life,” which was released March 3 from Penguin Books, authors Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez give fans of the show a fantastic primer on how it references, respects and outright pays homage to Lgbtq history — and makes sure that the VH1 series is part of that history’s timeline.
“We wanted this tone of being two really chatty gay uncles with a whole lot of stories about your queer forebears,” says Fitzgerald, half of the Philadelphia-based couple that’s behind the website TomandLorenzo.com, which delivers a daily dose of takes on fashion, celebrity, film, TV and pop culture; and podcast Tom & Lorenzo’s Pop Style Opinionfest. They still recap “Drag Race,...
“We wanted this tone of being two really chatty gay uncles with a whole lot of stories about your queer forebears,” says Fitzgerald, half of the Philadelphia-based couple that’s behind the website TomandLorenzo.com, which delivers a daily dose of takes on fashion, celebrity, film, TV and pop culture; and podcast Tom & Lorenzo’s Pop Style Opinionfest. They still recap “Drag Race,...
- 4/1/2020
- by Carole Horst
- Variety Film + TV
With his perverse (and some might say perverted) look at the early life of Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King, Winnipeg-born, Montreal-based multi-hyphenate Matthew Rankin proves himself far more than simply the artistic heir to fellow Canuck Guy Maddin. His low-budget, high-concept recounting of political life in the Dominion of Canada circa the turn of the 20th century is both satiric and scurrilous; the more familiar one is with Canadian history, the funnier it is. But even without prior knowledge of our neighbor to the north, it can be enjoyed for its combination of supreme creativity, jaw-dropping audacity and amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue. Following its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival, it was named best Canadian first feature and acquired by U.S. distributor Oscilloscope, which will release it in May.
Like Maddin, Rankin ransacks film, theater and art history for his visual style. Here, he creates...
Like Maddin, Rankin ransacks film, theater and art history for his visual style. Here, he creates...
- 3/7/2020
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Cobra Woman
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1944/ 1:33 / 71 min.
Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu
Directed by Robert Siodmak
In the early 40’s Universal Pictures was still best known for its shadowy black and white horror shows. That all changed in 1944 when the studio produced the kind of candy-colored dreamland not seen since Dorothy woke up to Oz. The movie was Robert Siodmak’s Cobra Woman starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall and studio stalwart Lon Chaney Jr., last seen putting the bite on Louise Allbritton in Siodmak’s Son of Dracula. There aren’t any vampires in this florid South Sea adventure but this is Universal, after all – villagers are dying and the bite marks on their throats suggest Siodmak’s latest wouldn’t stray too far from the studio’s comfort zone.
Montez plays two roles, a moony island girl named Tollea and her twin sister Naja who rules far-off...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1944/ 1:33 / 71 min.
Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu
Directed by Robert Siodmak
In the early 40’s Universal Pictures was still best known for its shadowy black and white horror shows. That all changed in 1944 when the studio produced the kind of candy-colored dreamland not seen since Dorothy woke up to Oz. The movie was Robert Siodmak’s Cobra Woman starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall and studio stalwart Lon Chaney Jr., last seen putting the bite on Louise Allbritton in Siodmak’s Son of Dracula. There aren’t any vampires in this florid South Sea adventure but this is Universal, after all – villagers are dying and the bite marks on their throats suggest Siodmak’s latest wouldn’t stray too far from the studio’s comfort zone.
Montez plays two roles, a moony island girl named Tollea and her twin sister Naja who rules far-off...
- 12/31/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Atrocities happen. Shakespearean-level atrocities, dismembered-and-baked-in-a-pie atrocities. Humanity’s responses – tears, mockery, more atrocity – are ludicrously inadequate, but really, aren’t you just glad we have Nathan Lane on our side?
And while we’re on the subject of inadequacy, put me down for singling out Lane, who is only the most obvious of the pleasures in Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel To Titus Andronicus, the outrageous, hysterically funny and connivingly moving new play opening on Broadway tonight at the Booth Theatre.
With co-stars Kristine Nielsen and Julie White – both splendid – and director George C. Wolfe, Gary could seem almost greedy bringing in original music by Danny Elfman, Ann Roth’s costumes – perfect to the last, bloody thread – and a set design by Santo Loquasto that makes a wondrously macabre mountain out of a massacre. So if Gary wants to gild the lilies and spread ’em around the morgue, go Gary.
And while we’re on the subject of inadequacy, put me down for singling out Lane, who is only the most obvious of the pleasures in Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel To Titus Andronicus, the outrageous, hysterically funny and connivingly moving new play opening on Broadway tonight at the Booth Theatre.
With co-stars Kristine Nielsen and Julie White – both splendid – and director George C. Wolfe, Gary could seem almost greedy bringing in original music by Danny Elfman, Ann Roth’s costumes – perfect to the last, bloody thread – and a set design by Santo Loquasto that makes a wondrously macabre mountain out of a massacre. So if Gary wants to gild the lilies and spread ’em around the morgue, go Gary.
- 4/22/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
For better or worse, Broadway’s Head Over Heels is stuck with being known as “the Go-Go’s musical” – better because of the good will floating on stage with all those lighter-than-air hits by Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, et.al., worse because the hard-working new production can’t seem to keep itself from popping those effervescence tune bubbles one by one.
With the Go-Go’s music shotgun-wedded to Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th century prose poem The Arcadia – a marriage conceived by Avenue Q‘s Jeff Whitty, who wrote the original book before splitting, reportedly in part over his inclination to rewrite some of the Go-Go’s lyrics – Head Over Heels is Elizabethan farce by way of ye olde MTV. The verse may be archaic, but the we’re here sentiment is as up to date as last week’s episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Further adapted by James Magruder...
With the Go-Go’s music shotgun-wedded to Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th century prose poem The Arcadia – a marriage conceived by Avenue Q‘s Jeff Whitty, who wrote the original book before splitting, reportedly in part over his inclination to rewrite some of the Go-Go’s lyrics – Head Over Heels is Elizabethan farce by way of ye olde MTV. The verse may be archaic, but the we’re here sentiment is as up to date as last week’s episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Further adapted by James Magruder...
- 7/27/2018
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive, Updated At 6:06 p.m. with comments about Spotlight at end: You might call August, 2014 a full-circle month for Mark Ruffalo. His performance as Ned Weeks in Ryan Murphy‘s HBO version of The Normal Heart earned one of that film’s astonishing 16 Emmy nominations, with the winners to be announced on Aug. 25. He’s eager to catch the Broadway revival of the 1996 stage play that launched his career, Kenneth Lonergan‘s This Is Our Youth, which begins on the 18th with Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin.
Writing about his work in Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me, the New York Times’ Stephen Holden said, “Mr. Ruffalo’s star-making performance deserves to be added to the list of charismatic, grownup lost boys that includes the Marlon Brando of A Streetcar Named Desire and the Jack Nicholson of Easy Rider.”
Yet this is the same guy who plays the Hulk in the Avengers franchise.
Writing about his work in Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me, the New York Times’ Stephen Holden said, “Mr. Ruffalo’s star-making performance deserves to be added to the list of charismatic, grownup lost boys that includes the Marlon Brando of A Streetcar Named Desire and the Jack Nicholson of Easy Rider.”
Yet this is the same guy who plays the Hulk in the Avengers franchise.
- 8/11/2014
- by Jeremy Gerard
- Deadline
Chemistry of Love La Mama Through May 19, 2013
With New York theater currently awash with revivals, often with movie-star cast members and big, big budgets, it can appear that new original, innovative, and inspirational non-musical works will not be taking center stage in the theater district anytime soon. So we give thanks to Off-Off Broadway's La Mama, and playwright Jill Campbell's spectacular Chemistry of Love, for waking me up to the fact that new and engaging permutations of stagecraft are still a possibility.
While Chemistry of Love certainly has a coherent plot, a simple synopsis of this resoundingly compelling play by Ms. Campbell could not do it justice. Like the creative works and lives of the conceptual multimedia artists (which this play explores), there is a complex multi-leveled richness to the play's action.
The story of this four-character play centers on conceptual artist Lara (Kim Merrill), who has been short-listed for a $500,000 grant,...
With New York theater currently awash with revivals, often with movie-star cast members and big, big budgets, it can appear that new original, innovative, and inspirational non-musical works will not be taking center stage in the theater district anytime soon. So we give thanks to Off-Off Broadway's La Mama, and playwright Jill Campbell's spectacular Chemistry of Love, for waking me up to the fact that new and engaging permutations of stagecraft are still a possibility.
While Chemistry of Love certainly has a coherent plot, a simple synopsis of this resoundingly compelling play by Ms. Campbell could not do it justice. Like the creative works and lives of the conceptual multimedia artists (which this play explores), there is a complex multi-leveled richness to the play's action.
The story of this four-character play centers on conceptual artist Lara (Kim Merrill), who has been short-listed for a $500,000 grant,...
- 5/11/2013
- by Jay Reisberg
- www.culturecatch.com
Today, we're featuring Everett Quinton and Charles Ludlam circa 1985. Founded by Ludlam after his split from John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous, The Ridiculous Theatrical company transcended transvetite, drag, and gay theatre. Until his death at age 44 of pneumonia as a complication of AIDS, Charles Ludlum maintained complete creative control of the company acting as writer and director for nearly every production. He received six Obies before his death. Everett Quinton, his partner, attempted to keep the company going after Ludlam died in 1987.
- 3/2/2013
- by Walter McBride
- BroadwayWorld.com
The performance that had the most influence on me was Charles Ludlam in "Camille," which he wrote and in which he played the female lead, Marguerite Gautier. I first saw him do it at the Evergreen Theatre on 13th Street in New York City in 1973. Then when I was at Northwestern University, his Ridiculous Theatrical Company did a series of performances at the University of Chicago, so I schlepped over there to see it. Later, when he took over the theater at One Sheridan Square, he did it there many times in repertory. I had never before seen a writer-performer and someone who had his own company. I had never seen drag in a truly theatrical context. He also had the same frame of reference of opera, theater history, and classic film as me. He was like a wonderful bucket of water awakening me to the possibility of making...
- 3/25/2012
- by help@backstage.com ()
- backstage.com
Tomorrow and Tuesday in Los Angeles, Redcat will be presenting Two Nights with Ernie Gehr: Early Films and New Digital Works. "It's an eye- and mind-expanding lineup," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It also provides a condensed primer to some of the issues at stake in American avant-garde cinema, which, partly because of its historical opposition to the dictates of commercial mainstream moviemaking and partly because it resists commodification (unlike, say, abstract painting, oppositional cinema doesn't rack up big sales at Sotheby's), has been relegated to the status of museum pieces and festival marginalia."
Also in La, the Museum of Contemporary Art opens two exhibitions today, Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles and Kenneth Anger: Icons, both on view through February 27.
For the Voice, Melissa Anderson meets Mario Montez, "featured player in Jack Smith's polysexual fantasia Flaming Creatures (1963), Andy Warhol's first drag-queen superstar,...
Also in La, the Museum of Contemporary Art opens two exhibitions today, Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles and Kenneth Anger: Icons, both on view through February 27.
For the Voice, Melissa Anderson meets Mario Montez, "featured player in Jack Smith's polysexual fantasia Flaming Creatures (1963), Andy Warhol's first drag-queen superstar,...
- 11/13/2011
- MUBI
Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and one of the pioneers of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement, died on Jan. 12. She was 91.Stewart nurtured the careers of many influential theater figures, often giving them their first exposure, including directors Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, Tom O'Horgan, and Joseph Chaikin; actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein; playwrights Sam Shepard, Charles Ludlam, Adrienne Kennedy, Taylor Mac, Lanford Wilson, and Israel Horovitz; composers Philip Glass, Elizabeth Swados, Meredith Monk, and Stephen Schwartz; and theater troupes Mabou Mines and the Talking Band. She also introduced American audiences to such European directors as Jerzy Grotowski and Andrei Serban.Stewart came to New York in the 1950s to become a fashion designer and founded La MaMa in 1961. More than 2,000 productions later, the theater, which is located at 74A E. Fourth St. in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, is still going strong. During the theater's infancy, Stewart funded it with her earnings from dress designing.
- 1/13/2011
- backstage.com
Who is John Epperson? He’s an American drag artist, actor, pianist, vocalist and writer who is mainly known for creating the glamorous and hilarious drag character Lypsinka. Lypsinka was born in late 1988 when Epperson’s act was a late-night addition to the bill of Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. His acts have since consisted of lip-synching to meticulously edited show-length soundtracks created from snippets of outrageous 20th-century female performances in movies and song. Ever since Epperson has appeared in full-length solo shows Off-Broadway, including The Boxed Set and As I Lay Lip-Synching. According to Epperson, the prototype for Lypsinka is stage actress Dolores Gray but other actresses who have influenced his work includes Ann-Margret, Charles Pierce, and Charles Ludlam.
Epperson has stated on various occasions that he preferred to be seen as an outsider saying, “When I see [gay] people who...
Epperson has stated on various occasions that he preferred to be seen as an outsider saying, “When I see [gay] people who...
- 11/28/2010
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Has it been a decade of films and freaks already? Well, it has! The 10th annual Coney Island Film Festival is set to run once again on Sept. 24-26 at the world famous Sideshows by the Seashore — the last operating circus-style sideshow/freak show in the U.S.A.
The festival starts with real bang this year with the Brooklyn premiere of Gary Beeber‘s latest documentary Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque, which chronicles the rise of the hot new burlesque trend in NYC and its most popular star, Dirty Martini. The film will also be preceded by two short films: The recently uncovered Museum of Wax by playwright Charles Ludlam and Jaye Cherian’s documentary Shape of the Shapeless.
This year the festival is also celebrating by hosting director Darren Aronofsky as their 2010 honoree. On Sept. 26, Aronofsky — who was born in South Brooklyn — will be present at a...
The festival starts with real bang this year with the Brooklyn premiere of Gary Beeber‘s latest documentary Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque, which chronicles the rise of the hot new burlesque trend in NYC and its most popular star, Dirty Martini. The film will also be preceded by two short films: The recently uncovered Museum of Wax by playwright Charles Ludlam and Jaye Cherian’s documentary Shape of the Shapeless.
This year the festival is also celebrating by hosting director Darren Aronofsky as their 2010 honoree. On Sept. 26, Aronofsky — who was born in South Brooklyn — will be present at a...
- 9/21/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Bob Moricz beats me to it and does a post on anti-underground film conditioning. Don’t resist the resistance! Plus, Bob reports on a what sounds like a fun event to be held in Portland, Or: The Video Gong Show. Cut & Paste has an interview with Rachel Bernsousa of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival. So, how’s the fest going this year? Great! Also, Cut & Paste has several reviews of films at Revelation. Can’t get to Washington, D.C. to see Phil Solomon’s film retrospective and American Falls installation? Genevieve Yue tells us what we’re missing on Moving Image Source. File this one under unique screening locations: It’s London’s new Portobello Pop Up Cinema microplex located under a freeway . (Via APEngine.) Frank’s Wild Lunch reviews the long-lost but recently unearthed The Sorrows of Dolores by Charles Ludlam, which just screened at Outfest. Making...
- 7/18/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
First, my apologies. I’m starting out with a completely self-serving internal link: I created an Underground Film Resource Center page with links to all the different resources I have for underground filmmakers and fans alike on Bad Lit: Film festivals, films, filmmakers, theaters, distributors, websites, the timeline, and more. I have a few ideas of more resources to launch in the future, too. Distributor Channel Midnight has announced that Nathan Wrann’s Burning Inside is now available as an app for the iPhone, iPad and iTouch. I’m not posting this link so much as to promote this particular film — although I highly recommend it — but because I don’t see announcements like this very much. How much underground content is available on iTunes? When I look: Nothing. Well, now there’s this. I want to read more announcements like this in the future. The Rome News-Tribune has an...
- 7/11/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Maintaining truthfulness and avoiding stereotypes are the major challenges when playing racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities.Consider the daunting task that Tamer Aziz faces in tackling a character who is gay, Iranian, and Muslim in Jay Paul Deratany's fact-based play "Haram Iran" (now at the Celebration Theatre in Hollywood). Or the issues that black actors deal with in enacting a brutal racist episode within the context of a minstrel show in John Kander and Fred Ebb's musical "The Scottsboro Boys" (currently at New York's Vineyard Theatre). Justin Huen also has his work cut out for him playing Oedipus in Luis Alfaro's play "Oedipus el Rey," a retelling of Sophocles' tragedy set in a Los Angeles barrio (playing the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, Calif.). Jennifer Lim grapples with a fully assimilated and not very sensitive Asian American in Lauren Yee's satire "Ching Chong Chinaman" (now at New York's...
- 3/31/2010
- backstage.com
Drama Desk Award-winner Everett Quinton (Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company), Michael Winther (33 Variations, Damn Yankees, 1776, and Mamma Mia! on Broadway), and Marlon Sherman (Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast on Broadway) are set to star in Max Understood, running at the 45th Street Theatre in the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival. Marlon Sherman will be playing the title role of Max.
- 9/3/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
The Old Globe's production of Charles Ludlam's gothic spoof, The Mystery of Irma Vep stars Jeffrey M. Bender and John Cariani are a "cast of thousands," taking on the roles of Lady Enid, Lord Edgar, Nicodemus Underwood - and a mummy - among many others. Directed by Henry Wishcamper. The Mystery of Irma Vep will run in the Globe's Arena Stage at the San Diego Museum of Art's James S. Copley Auditorium July 31 - Sept. 6, 2009.
- 8/2/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Annex Theatre Company continues its 22nd season of production with the northwest premiere of Love's Tangled Web, a hellzapoppin sex farce written by Charles Ludlam and directed by Ed Hawkins. Love's Tangled Web opens on Friday, April 17, 2009, 8:00 p.m. curtain, and runs on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. through May 16, 2009 at Annex Theatre, located at 1100 East Pike Street, on Seattle's Capitol Hill. Pay-what-you-can performances will be held on April 24th and 25th, and an Industry Performance (open to the public) will be held on Monday, May 11th.
- 3/9/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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