Directed by Russell Blackwood
Musical Direction by Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn

Held Over: Through December 19, 2010!
* Saturdays at 8:00 PM October.
* Saturdays at 8:00 PM and Sundays at 7:00 PM in November.
* Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 7:00 in December.
* No performances Thanksgiving weekend.

At the Hypnodrome, 575 10th Street, San Francisco

$30 General Admission
$69 “Shock Box” Seat for 2
Buy Tickets Online

Press/Media Info

Thrillpeddlers is proud to announce that due to popular demand and weekly sold-out houses “Pearls Over Shanghai,” San Francisco’s longest-running Cockettes Musical has been extended once again – now through December 19, 2010

“Pearls Over Shanghai,” an original musical by Link Martin and Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn, is the centerpiece of our second 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 also exerted a profound influence on the culture of our times, from the phenomenon of midnight movies to glitter rock stars and their outrageous fashions.

Based loosely on John Colton’s scandalous 1926 Broadway play “The Shanghai Gesture” (later transformed into a deliriously decadent art deco film noir by Josef von Sternberg in 1941), “Pearls Over Shanghai” is a comic mock-operetta about white slavery and miscegenation set in the colorful world of 1937 Shanghai, China. 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, witty 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

Originally produced as a Nocturnal Dream Show and performed at midnight at the old Palace Theatre in Chinatown, “Pearls Over Shanghai” was the fabled and fabulous Cockettes’ first and best original showpiece. This musical became the crown jewel of The Cockettes repertoire, enjoying three revivals in two years, including a notorious and infamous run at New York’s Anderson Theatre in 1971.

Although “Pearls Over Shanghai” had long been germinating in the fertile mind of Link Martin, it struck the trend-setting, gender-bending theatrical troupe as extremely fortuitous when the real Peking Opera played the same stage at the Palace Theatre. At the time, much was made over a missing trunk of sequined kimonos and props that seemed to vanish. However, the items were not lost and did reappear, some months later, spawning “Pearls Over Shanghai” Two, Three, and Four. For the Thrillpeddlers production, original Cockettes Tahara and Billy Bowers will lend their considerable talents to our resident costume mistress Kara Emry in order to create original designs reminiscent of the opulent 1930s Orient as well as the psychedelic splendor of 1960s San Francisco.

Stage Director for “Pearls Over Shanghai” is Russell Blackwood, and original Cockette and composer Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn will serve as Musical Director. The cast will include original Cockette Rumi Missabu reprising his role as the evil Madame Gin Sling. Connie Champagne, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and Leanne Borghesi will alternate in the role of Petrushka, first created by disco diva Sylvester in the original productions. With a supporting cast of twenty, costumes a-plenty, and a score of some two dozen songs, this production promises to be 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.

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,” “Pharaoh’s Tomb,” and “Padded Cell,” which offer the opportunity for a heightened psychedelic experience during the “opium” blackout sequence at the climax of “Pearls Over Shanghai”—with added special effects as a nod to the 1950s horror movie gimmicks of William Castle.

The program will feature 3 One-Act plays, including the title piece KISS OF BLOOD by Jean Aragny and Francis Neilson, a 1929 shocker from the repertoire of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol the original French horror theatre, in a new English adaptation by Daniel Zilber (co-founder of Thrillpeddlers), and LIPS OF THE DAMNED and THE EMPRESS OF COLMA, two original plays in the Grand Guignol tradition commissioned by Thrillpeddlers from New York playwright Rob Keefe. The bill culminates with Thrillpeddlers’ famed black-out spook show finale when ghostly apparitions materialize before the audience’s startled eyes. The Hypnodrome’s “Shock Box” seats provide pairs of patrons with privacy and an added jolt of “lights-out thrills.”

KISS OF BLOOD (Le Baiser de sang) caused a sensation when it debuted at infamous Parisian horror theatre, Le Theatre du Grand Guignol in 1929 due to the gruesomeness of its opening scene, set as it is in an operating theatre during the aftermath of a botched brain surgery. At a theatre that had acquired an international reputation for onstage violence, shocking its audience must have been no mean feat – but by confronting the audience with a gruesome tableau the moment the curtain rises, they achieved their goal. The science of brain surgery was still in its infancy, and inexact, to say the least. As the play unfolds, the theme of madness as a surgically operable malady is explored with even more startling developments.

LIPS OF THE DAMNED, suggested by “La Veuve” (a French slang term for The Guillotine, literally “The Widow”), is set in a French museum of torture devices and other antique curiosities, forced to close its doors due to an uncontrollable infestation of starved rats. An illicit amorous tryst is interrupted, or perhaps enhanced, by the intrusion of unwelcome parties.

THE EMPRESS OF COLMA takes place in the basement clubhouse of potential pageant candidates all vying desperately for the title of “Empress of Colma”. Their dental assistant girlfriend, tolerated only for her easy access to pharmaceutical drugs, scores the wrong drugs one fateful day, with hilarious, …albeit disastrous, results.

At intermission, Thrillpeddlers invite audience members to partake in a macabre demonstration of their full-size replica of an 18th century Guillotine. Steady nerves and cameras are a must.

Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome Theatre is located at 575 10th Street, San Francisco. (Bryant & Division Sts.) Tickets for SHOCKTOBERFEST!! 2010 are $25 general admission or $35 premium admission for “Shock Boxes” and “Turkish Lounges” (premium tickets sold in pairs only), and are available at Brown Paper Tickets or by calling 800-838-3006.