Hell’s Belles
April 5 – 28, 2002
Cowpokes, 2240 St. Claude Avenue
Tickets: $12 – $15, sliding scale | Call 606-9903 for reservations
Running With Scissors is back–and they’re venturing where no sane man would dare to tread: into the depraved depths of a Southern girls’ school!
Written by Flynn De Marco, Jonno, and other members of the company, Hell’s Belles takes place during the Civil War at the French Finishing School, lorded over by one Miss Beatrice French. Her charges? Some of the bawdiest, cattiest, downright orneriest gals the South has ever seen! Into their midst stumbles a seemingly innocent Union soldier, wounded at a nearby battle. He’s taken in and nursed, but what will Beatrice and the girls do with him when he’s well enough to walk again?
Hell’s Belles is based largely on Clint Eastwood’s The Beguiled (filmed just downriver from New Orleans at Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation), with a sprinkling of Misery, Imitation of Life, The Bad Seed, Reform School Girls, and Mildred Pierce thrown in for good measure. Brian Peterson (“Mrs. Finkelstein” from the troupe’s recent Grenadine McGunkle) stars as Beatrice French, the iron-fisted but lonely headmistress. Charles Grant, Roy Haylock, Veronica Oliver, Elizabeth Pearce, Dorian Rush, and Jason Toups are the women she controls. And Flynn De Marco is the ill-starred Union soldier who’s rescued by Beatrice and her pack of Confederate she-devils.
Hell’s Belles premieres for the Krewe of Satyricon on Friday, April 5, 2002, with performances Saturday and Sunday through April 28. Showtime is 8:00 at Cowpokes Theater Space, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, at the corner of St. Claude and Marigny Street, one block below Elysian Fields Avenue. Parking is located behind the building, on Marigny Street. Tickets are $12-$15, sliding scale. For more information, please call 504 606 9903. (For tickets to the opening on Friday, April 5, please call Mickey at 522 8047.)
WHAT: Hell’s Belles, an original two-act play
WHEN: Saturdays and Sundays at 8:00pm, with a special premiere on Friday, April 5. Though April 28
WHERE: Cowpokes Theater Space, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, at the corner of St. Claude and Marigny Street, one block below Elysian Fields Avenue
WHO: The cast of Hell’s Belles includes….
Brian Peterson as Beatrice French, the headmistress of the French Finishing School
Roy Haylock as Sarah St. Simone, the stubborn, condescending Daughter of the South
Dorian Rush as Melba McWhortle, the forward-thinking consciousness-raiser
Elizabeth Pearce as Althea Pitts, the romantic drama queen
Jason Toups as Lucy, the tomboy
Veronica Oliver as Caroline, the new girl
Charles Grant as Esther, the sassy, savvy slave
Flynn De Marco as Major Ashley Wood, a renegade Union soldier
Jim Jeske as Buford, a backwoods Confederate soldier, and Nigel, Beatrice’s effete neighbor
Patrick Flynn as Little Joe, a dim-witted Confederate soldier, and Neville, Nigel’s less-than-masculine “cousin”
HOW MUCH: Tickets are $12 – $15 (sliding scale) and may be reserved at 504 606 9903 or purchased at the door. (For tickets to the opening on Friday, April 5, please call Mickey at 504 522 8047.)
