"Beards Are For Shaving': 007 spoof at the Wilma

The collaborative Bearded Ladies Cabaret has been around Philadelphia for a couple of years now, peppering theaters and hotel lobbies with snide remarks, grimacey glances and mimey antics worthy of silent film villains.

The ensemble puts on 80- to 90-minute revues with text, original songs and pop numbers that might include take-offs on Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Edith Piaf or Scarlett O'Hara (in drag). They are slight, not meaty, but they serve a purpose by offering the city these clever little entertainments.

Thanks to funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Beardeds have raised their visibility level in Philadelphia, with recent performances at the Rodin Museum opening, Bastille Day at Eastern State Penitentiary and the Philadelphia Art Museum's "After Five" programs.

In the Wilma Theater lobby this month they reprised Beards Are For Shaving: An 007 Cabaret, a gender-bending spoof on the James Bond films. With clever texts to songs from classic Bond films, the Bearded Ladies players— Kristen Bailey, Liz Filios, Jenna Horton, John Jarboe, Rebecca Kanach and Mary Tuomanen— deconstructed the dashing, oft-tuxedoed Brit secret agent who manages to seduce and sip martinis while foiling evil clods bent on taking over the world.

Allen, on piano, and Andrew Nielson as Q, on bass, embodied those fellows who used to play in Philadelphia's smoky little piano bars and rathskellers like the old Venture Inn or the Tradewinds, which were still popular in the '60s, when Bond ordered his first on-screen martini in Dr. No.

But the Bearded Ladies' concerns here are post-gender generational concepts. The players compose songs from passages in Judith Butler's 1990 book, Gender Trouble, which explores the construction of gender. Miss Moneypenny (Mary Martello, guesting with her gutsy vocalese) asks everyone, "Do you identify yourself as male or female?"

As a quite debonair Bond, John Jarboe barely escapes assaults on his masculine assumptions or his desire for punishment from a thoughtful Pussy Galore (Liz Filios). When Judith Butler (Kristen Bailey) shows up in sequined top and fishnet stockings, gender theory really hits the fan.

With a video monitor showing clips from the actual movies as well as set pieces like a hilariously clumsy "Shark Ballet" in between, Beards Are For Shaving provides plenty to drink in, laugh at and reflect on.