The gay ’50s Comic heights in Pleasure Valley BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
	Invasion of Pleasure Valley By Kim Hoff, Karen "Mal" Malme, and Jess Martin. Directed by Renée C. Farster. Set by Brett Bundock. Lighting by Mary Sykes. Costumes by Nathalie Degenhardt. Sound by Brian Jewell. Original theme music by David Michael Curry. With Irene Daly, John Dupuis, Lauren Hall, Kim Hoff, Becca A. Lewis, Karen "Mal" Malme, Lorna McKenzie, and Guy R. Noyes. Presented by Queer Soup Theater at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through July 31.

Invasion of Pleasure Valley opens with that familiar scene: Mom starting a healthy and nutritious breakfast of bacon sizzling on the stovetop, Dad getting ready for a fulfilling day of work at the weapons factory. His shirt is pressed, and her cotton-candy-pink taffeta dress is poofy enough to break her fall if she were to jump from a plane. (Cue jaunty, whistling theme music.) It’s just another morning in 1952 in Pleasure Valley, where there’s a pie in every oven, a glint in every eye, and rampant sexual repression. Until, of course, phallic-shaped aliens invade and their sinister plans go amiss. Instead of their taking captives, a wee snafu leads to a widespread liberation of sorts.

In Pleasure Valley, Queer Soup Theater takes the gender-role rigidity of the 1950s — the notion that "father knows best and mother takes care of all the rest" — and turns it on its well-coiffed head. The evening lampoons everything that’s textbook ’50s, from white-picket-fence families to B-movie classics to outer-space obsessions to kitchen gadgets that somehow make life complete. It’s a wild ride, but one navigated on cruise control. The evening sustains a manic pace similar to what you find in feature films based on Saturday Night Live skits. Over the two-hour spree, the speed-rush wears thin and you may start to wonder whether you’re there yet. But the cast has such a hoot — relishing the lewd zingers, puns, and pranks with sugary smiles — that you’d be one fanatical killjoy if you didn’t go along for the ride.

It all begins with a jolly voiceover narrating the morning routine in the kitchen of Suzie (a giddy Irene Daly) and Dick Longstaff (Guy R. Noyes), where Brett Bundock’s space-age décor and Technicolor shades rule. No time is wasted in alerting us that secret desires lurk beneath the cheerful exterior: when Suzie chirps that the Pleasure Valley Men in Uniform calendar is out, Dick makes a grab for it. Meanwhile, neighbors are buzzing about a weird object they spotted in the sky the night before.

Soon Suzie is at her Dupperware party, where a gathering of gals who sell plastic storage go ga-ga over the latest advances in the field. Suzie’s friends and fellow saleswomen (Lorna McKenzie, Becca A. Lewis, Lauren Hall) are themselves a riotous plastic lot who trade cleaning tips and swig stiff cocktails with the same enthusiasm. Then comes the unannounced arrival of Pussy Whetmore. (Subtlety is not what this playwriting team is going for.) Played by Karen "Mal" Malme, she’s party hostess Missy Maine’s butch cousin, and upon hearing that paranormal activity might be afoot in her old home town, UFO expert Pussy has returned with a geiger-counter device, a "smart" haircut, and a reawakened interest in Suzie, with whom she went to high school. In a campy theatrical flower bed of intentionally corny light and sound effects, amid the blare of double entendres, the pair’s forbidden love blossoms.

When the space invader nabs Suzie, the stage explodes into a cheery game-show setting. The power-hungry, phallic-shaped ‘Wonderlian’ (played by Kim Hoff with an air of demonic Don Pardo) casts its hypnotic spell and presses Suzie to disclose the secret of world domination. But universal rule is as likely for this foreign body as it was for Austin Powers’s nemesis, Dr. Evil. A quick series of farcical mishaps and reversals leaves Suzie with a supply of alien gizmos that resemble a hand mixer fused with a dildo. The gadget affords waves of erotic ecstasy to whoever clutches it. Ever the enterprising saleswoman, Suzie marshals her team and they undertake a door-to-door mission to transform the lives of Pleasure Valley women.

As in any classic B-horror flick, every dribble of pleasure is trailed by a hemorrhage of evil. Not buying a ‘Wonder-Do’ can transform your life as well, since the bliss generator is also a weapon that zaps offenders into oblivion. Soon the formerly prim have turned grim, launching a relentless effort to take over the world by coital control. It’s the playwrights’ zany metaphor for the women’s-lib movement that’s still years off.

While the women satisfy themselves with one another, Dick, whom Noyes portrays with a dense comic-strip glee, is indulging in a liaison of his own as he works with the hunky sheriff to figure out what’s happened to the disappeared. But really, the play has less to do with missing persons than with characters bawdily finding themselves.