Summary
A threadbare vaudeville troupe, marooned in a nameless Midwestern town after their last engagement collapses, stumble upon salvation in the guise of a dilapidated sanitarium-cum-beauty-farm where hydrotherapy, talcum, and scalp massages have replaced greasepaint and rim-shots. Under the stewardship of a fast-talking impresario turned self-styled ‘aesthetic physician’, the hoofers, comics, and soubrettes swap pratfalls for paraffin dips, converting the spa’s bored bourgeoise clientele into an unwitting chorus line. Powder puffs become props; cucumber masks slip like sagging commedia masks; the slapstick migrates from stageboards to steam-room tiles. Amid the eucalyptus haze, a lovelorn soubrette and a bumbling stagehand negotiate romance through mistaken identities involving seaweed wraps, while the troupe’s aging clown, his face forever frozen in a tragic grin of cold cream, orchestrates a manic revue that will either restore their fortunes or expose the spa as a sham. When regulators descend, white coats flap like seagulls over a garbage scow, and the final curtain threatens to drop on both careers and collarbones, the ensemble must decide whether applause or anonymity is the greater poison.
Synopsis
A stranded troupe of players are offered a substitute for their ordinary mode of gaining a livelihood, in the managing of a beauty institution.
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