Theater review: 'Women Behind Bars' at Celebration Theatre

[Shana A]

Theater review: 'Women Behind Bars' at Celebration Theatre
December 19, 2009 | 11:30 am

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/12/theater-review-women-behind-bars-.html

400.WOMEN BEHIND BARS - 1 Post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS, Tom Eyen's 1975 camp classic, "Women Behind Bars," captured the wildly celebratory mood of the gay community, which had so recently broken free of its cage of shame and social opprobrium.

That festive atmosphere endures in the show's present production at the Celebration. However, don't expect taut dramaturgy in the  fervid send-up of 1950s prison movies. Concocted in an era when audiences could get a contact high from the marijuana smoke drifting out of many small theaters, "Women" was and remains a bit of a mess, a self-indulgent and overlong enterprise glutted with camp tropes.