Con artist triggers revenge plots in ‘As Bees in Honey Drown’

"She takes the floor and bulldozes over all the other characters," says Tressa Bern, the affable actress inhabiting the outrageous Alexa Vere de Vere, who puts the "artist" in con artist while conning a slew of artists in "As Bees in Honey Drown," Las Vegas Little Theatre’s production of Douglas Carter Beane’s galloping comedy whirlwind.

"It’s written almost like a film script — scene, cut to scene, cut to scene," says director Paul Thornton. "In one scene alone, (characters) go from the back seat of a limousine to a restaurant to the limousine to the airport to the limousine to another restaurant to the limousine to a nightclub to the Staten Island Ferry."

The high life as lived by a lowlife.

"Bees" buzzes around bamboozling Alexa — once known as plain, glamour-challenged Brenda Gelb — as she charmingly swindles the fame-famished arts intelligentsia of New York reaching for the higher rungs on the climb to celebrity. As the play opens, Alexa, impersonating a record producer, finds an oblivious dupe in Evan, a young writer whom she promises oodles of kudos from a fawning world if he pens a screenplay based on her grand (exquisitely phony) life, inflating his ego while deflating his wallet. She even seduces the (apparently not completely) gay target of her faux-affections.

But after Evan’s funds are eviscerated, the burned mark enlists others hoodwinked by this dream peddler to devise The Great Revenge.

"I was fascinated by the thought that so many people want their 15 minutes of fame without having to put any work into it," Thornton says about the spotlight-craving lambs led to financial slaughter by Alexa, whom he pegs as "a combination of Auntie Mame, Holly Golightly from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and Sally Bowles from ‘Cabaret.’ One of the characters has a line that says, ‘She’s every woman in a movie I have ever loved.’ She’s over the top and bigger than life."

That’s act-one Alexa, before we’re whisked backward to her earlier identity as act-two’s completely common Brenda Gelb. "I have more of an affection for her younger character, because you can see how real and genuine she is, wanting to make something of herself," Bern says. "Then she discovers she’s going nowhere fast being herself, so she reinvents herself and becomes completely unlikable."

Yet wickedly fun to watch. Bern took Thornton’s movie-amalgam appraisal of Alexa as an invitation to conduct cinematic research for her theatrical role. "I watched all those films, played them over and over and over," she says. "She does monologues from each one, recognizable ones. They’re all about eccentric women everyone wants to be around, but they’re trying to make themselves into something bigger than they are. But when she goes after the up-and-coming, she sees that look in their eyes and goes for the jugular."

Beane’s go-go comedy pacing — including dialogue an admiring Bern calls "so fast and catchy and smart and funny and savvy" — creates a challenge to capture the breathlessness without causing befuddlement. "That’s one of my major concerns," Thornton says. "We’re trying to get the transitions smooth enough from one location to another so the audience follows us and still understands what’s going on."

What’s going on are fantasies of fame chasers revealed as illusions of the gullible. "You so desperately want the fantasy to be the truth," Bern says. "And here comes this amazing, dashing person who tells you everything you want to hear, even though something in the back of your head is going, ‘This is not right.’ "

That’s called denial. It’s the pivot point in the scheme of a con ma’am.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.