Parody playwright Jamie Morris (Mommie Queerest, The Facts Of Life: The Lost Episode, Re-Designing Women, Gilligan’s Fire Island) is at it again. His all-male spoofs have tackled Joan and Christina Crawford, the Eastland school girls, the Sugarbaker gals of Atlanta, and those seven stranded castaways. Now Morris has set his sights on Hannibal and Clarice, one of film’s most iconic screen duos. His twisted take on the Oscar-winning film opens April 23 at the Diversionary Theatre. The Silence of the Clams will play Thursdays thru Sundays until May 3.
Based on the Oscar-winning film, “Clams” finds butch FBI agent Clarice Startling assigned to help find Nancy Pelosi’s missing daughter and save her from “Beaver Bob,” a serial killer who skins his victims “down there.” Clarice attempts to gain better insight into the mind of the killer by interviewing Dr. Hannibal Lichter, a convicted psychopath who “eats” his female victims before kills them. The twisted relationship forces Clarice not only to confront her own psychological demons (when will those clams stop screaming?) but leads her face-to-face with a demented killer so evil that even she may not have the courage – or strength – to stop him!
Imagine the Airplane movies married with The Silence of the Lambs.
Clams had its world premiere in Provincetown. In 2007, The Provincetown Banner said, “The Silence of the Clams, modeled masterfully after the Academy-Award winning film, creates and instantly perfects a new genital genre, the ‘vagina joke.’ Spread the word, Clams is funny, uproarious, provocative and smart.”
When the show played in Las Vegas the reviews were very much the same.
Las Vegas Weekly said, “The 75-minute parody plays fast and loose like a John Waters movie. Clams provides the rude jolt of energy that the local theater scene needed—I can’t wait for the company’s next pop-culture victim.”
And the Las Vegas Review Journal said, “Morris goes way beyond impersonation. He gets inside this guy’s skin so thoroughly that you wonder what might have been if Morris’ agent had gotten the original script before Anthony Hopkins. He’s a major talent. He is the sort of actor worth seeing in just about anything.”
For his role Morris was nominated for Best Actor of the Year in Las Vegas by the Review-Journal’s annual Tony Awards.
