Smut Onstage

In the past few years, the one-time disreputables at Minds Eye Theatre have cleaned up real nice, staging hard-edged but serious dramas in winning and on-the-cheap productions. Now, Minds Eye is giddily pissing respectability away at the local premiere of Tom Eyen’s exploitation spoof Women Behind Bars. Director Sara Crow says, “Some of the shows we do, I want you to leave thinking. This one, I want you to leave needing a shower.” As any fan of late-night Skinemax would guess, showers figure prominently in Women Behind Bars. Other shocks include catfights, an orgy, an onstage birth and every sort of bad behavior you can fathom. And drag. Crow’s husband, Craig Aikman, an actor too rarely spotlighted around town, dons girlish cellblock togs as the tough-cookie overlord of the prison. “Divine played that part in New York,” Crow says. “Craig says he’s doing it as Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford as the matron, but he really looks like Linda Tripp.” Still, Crow is a serious-minded citizen of the theatrical world, so she can justify the show on intellectual grounds. She insists, “It reminds you that our differences are amusing, and to embrace them rather than not talk about them.” But to embrace them women-in-prison style, right? “Yeah,” Crow says. “By grabbing a boob.” Once again she’s marked her turf — that sordid corner where camp meets sleaze. The curtain opens tonight at 8 at the Just Off Broadway Theatre (3051 Central, 913-897-2348). Minds Eye Theatre Just Off Broadway Theatre
Fri., Sept. 21, 8 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 22, 8 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 23, 8 p.m.; Thu., Sept. 27, 8 p.m.; Fri., Sept. 28, 8 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 29, 8 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 30, 8 p.m.; Thu., Oct. 4, 8 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 5, 8 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 6, 8 p.m., 2007