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Theatre in Review: Ginger Twinsies (Orpheum Theatre)

Aneesa Folds and Russell Daniels. Photo: Matthew Murphy

Am I glad I did my homework: The Parent Trap, the 1961 version with Hayley Mills, was probably the first film I ever caught in a theatre. (It was either that or The Guns of Navarone, and now you have my childhood in a nutshell.) When I mentioned this fact to a member of the Ginger Twinsies production team, I was gently told that it is based on the 1998 Lindsay Lohan remake, the existence of which I had entirely forgotten. For millennials, apparently, the film, which made Lohan a star, is a generational touchstone. It also launched the directorial career of Nancy Meyers, whose "high-thread-count" comedies are defined by their swanky interiors and high-gloss cinematography.

So I dipped into 1998's The Parent Trap, a smart move: If you haven't seen it, you will leave Ginger Twinsies utterly bewildered. If you're in the know, however, and the right mood -- a cocktail or two wouldn't hurt -- you'll find some pretty big laughs. I can only wonder what Meyers would make of this rude, raucous, deliberately scrappy spoof. Writer/director Kevin Zak roasts the film to a turn, gleefully exposing its gaping plot holes and excavating a gay subtext in all sorts of places. Back at what Variety likes to call the Mouse House, they're probably having apoplectic fits.

Surely, you're familiar with the plot: Lookalike, eleven-year-old summer campers Annie and Hallie -- total strangers and, at first glance, rivals -- discover that they are twins, separated at birth, each of them doled out to a parent in their divorce agreement. It's typical of Zak's approach that these sweet, spunky young things are played by plus-sized adults (one of them male) of different races. To be clear, this is not a case of color-blind casting: Discovering their sisterhood, Hallie wonders, "Does that mean when our parents split, they decided they'd each take one of us and then they were like, 'I'll take this one, you keep the Black one?'"

Eager to learn about their absent parents, the girls switch places. Annie, landing in the California vineyard run by her father Nick, learns that he plans to marry Meredith, a chic mantrap with dollar signs where her pupils should be. Hallie, hanging out in London with her mother, Elizabeth, at her "wedding gown design studio and gay bar," is alerted to the impending nuptials and soon all the characters, including the "queer-adjacent" servants Chessy and Martin, are running around a posh San Francisco hotel, where, as they say, hijinks ensue.

As you can tell from the previous paragraphs, Zak has a few notes about Meyer's and Charles Shyers' script. Among other things, Ginger Twinsies mocks the sequence in which the girls, at summer camp, engage in a series of pranks so complex they would defy the Mission: Impossible team. A swishy supporting character introduces himself, saying, "I'm Richard! I'm what's considered positive gay representation for 1998." Zeroing in on the film's phoniest aspect, the script mercilessly examines the parents' monstrous decision to separate the girls, keeping them in the dark about each other's existence. "You trafficked my twin sister to a foreign country," Hallie says. "This is a human rights issue." Well, isn't it?

Most of the time, however, Ginger Twinsies is motivated by a kind of Mad Magazine glee, taking potshots at Native American land acknowledgments, the Brie Larson vehicle Room, the HIV medicine PReP, The White Lotus, Idina Menzel, and Diana, the Musical. British Annie's attempt at passing herself as a California girl is exposed by Chessy, who says, accusingly, "Why are you suddenly so critical of Dick Van Dyke's accent work in Mary Poppins?" There are staged allusions to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wicked, and Sweeney Todd. Shirley MacLaine and Julianne Moore each turn up for a second or two, as does Jamie Lee Curtis, to talk about "trow-ma" and to plug the upcoming release of Freakier Friday. I laughed at this hailstorm of gags about two-thirds of the time, which, for this type of frolic, is pretty darned good.

Zak's speedy, slam-bang direction never lets up for a second, and his cast are fully tuned into the same demented wavelength. Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds attack the roles of Annie and Hallie with gusto. If Matthew Wilkas, who plays Nick, mostly exists to have his clothes ripped off, exposing his chiseled chest, he's a good sport about it. As Elizabeth, Lakisha May perfectly emulates Natasha Richardson's dizzy, what-am-I-doing-here demeanor in the film. Jimmy Ray Bennett and Grace Reiter are fun as Chessy and Martin, barreling into a lavender marriage out of apparent ignorance. For sheer shamelessness, Phillip Taratula is hard to beat as Meredith, seen here as a PTSD sufferer who defiantly insists that she is being framed as the villain of the piece.

Matching the production's we'll-spoof-anything approach, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt has adopted a summer camp show aesthetic, deploying plenty of cheap wood paneling decorated with kids' drawings and filling the stage with crude, cut-out set pieces. (Hang on for the cardboard Harvey Milk in the San Francisco scenes.) In contrast, lighting designer Bradley King rolls out plenty of saturated color and disco moves, especially in a sequence featuring Annie and Martin's secret handshake, here turned into something only slightly less elaborate than the Oklahoma! dream ballet. Wilberth Gonzalez's costumes, of lizards, horses, and matching twin ensembles, earn plenty of laughs. Joshua D. Reid's sound design includes the Nat King Cole hit "L-O-V-E" (a nod to the 1998 film) and the Sherman Brothers' "Let's Get Together" (from the 1961 original) as well as a bevy of effects that includes a burp that can probably be heard all over the East Village.

Ginger Twinsies, which, at the performance I attended, had a knowing audience in stitches, is another step in the mainstreaming of a magpie queer sketch comedy sensibility that has emerged from the downtown theatre scene. Marla Mindelle seemingly got the ball rolling with Titanique (and The Big Gay Jamboree, which played the Orpheum last year), but there are other examples, too, including a little thing called Oh, Mary! (Josh Sharp's slightly more serious ta-da! falls in this category, too, I think.) The time is ripe: In this dishonest, censorial era, what better way to clap back than with a loud, clarifying burst of laughter? Prudes and power-mongers, beware: The ginger twinsies are coming for you. --David Barbour


(24 July 2025)

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