Cheesecake on the lanai is child's play. The unofficial parody Thank You for Being a Friend (written by Nick Brennan) isn’t your granny’s Golden Girls; this is a jaw-dropping degenerate spin on the beloved 1980s sitcom, less worshipful homage than irreverent sideshow. That the show’s four women are all portrayed by men barely registers as a surprise compared with the script’s indulgently filthy plot points and rampant vulgarity. At the Ringwald Theatre, this Joe Bailey–directed Who Wants Cake? production is fearless in seeking the lowest of lowbrow humor, turning in a hot mess of a play that wants nothing more than to have some raucous fun.

The names have been changed to protect the copyright, so here we find “Blanchet” (Richard Payton), “Dorthea” (Jamie Richards), “Roz” (Joe Plambeck), and “Sophie” (Jeff Weiner) dealing with the latest upheaval at the Miami-area Shady Oaks retirement community. After a superbly corny take on the opening credits, the show dives right into the main conflict: the ladies’ new neighbor, former member of the boy band 'N Sync and famous gay Lance Bass (Billy Dixon), throws all-night bacchanals that are loud enough to keep the fearsome foursome awake. When confronted, sassy Bass refuses to suppress the noise; instead, the two parties up the ante by making a wager regarding the conveniently scheduled Shady Oaks talent show. The rest of the story concerns preparing for the show, dealing with diva personalities, making and changing alliances, and a decent helping of shenanigans. Within the premise, there are hallmark moments and scenes that would be right at home in the TV show, but a crass discussion of genitals or a comically brandished piece of sex paraphernalia is rarely far behind. Beyond Dixon’s feisty and conniving Lance, actor Rich Wilson portrays the few other characters that pop up, primarily toying with expectations as Lance’s servile plaything, Cubby. Interspersed among the bawdy humor and Golden Girls in-jokes are other major touchstones of camp that are splendid on their own merits.

Playwright Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! spans one summer in the lives of eight gay men, but its depth of emotion and breadth of content makes the play, and this Who Wants Cake? production, feel more like an entire life, lived in the fortunate company of close friends. The world of the play, nineteen-ninety-something in upstate New York, is inconsequential but for faint cultural time stamps and understated New England–nautical fashion influences (by costume designer and choreographer Ben Stange). The summer lake house of Gregory (Keith Allan Kalinowski) and Bobby (Matthew Turner Shelton) is the getaway of choice for a passel of longtime friends and associates: Perry (Richard Payton) and Arthur (John Nowaczyk), who have been together more than a decade; John (Charles VanHoose), with his latest young plaything, Ramon (Vince Kelley), in tow; and Buzz (Joe Plambeck), whose adoration of long-ago Broadway musicals and their leading ladies would be a cliché but for how genuine it is. Spanning the duration of the summer, Memorial Day to Independence Day to Labor Day, the play’s three acts are relatively devoid of dramatic conflict. The men disagree, of course, and confront each other at times; however, the only really palpable danger is from outside influences, the kind with which any adult can relate.

The fear of aging and lost youthful creativity is presented to Gregory, a famous dancer and choreographer seeing the beginning of the end of his career, both in his encroaching physical limitations and in the perceived threat of up-and-comer Ramon. Romantic couplings and fidelity are embarked upon and violated and worked through with difficulty; even Perry and Arthur reflect on past indiscretions. Coping with illness and death is also present: here, AIDS makes Buzz’s vivaciousness feel downright defiant and brings John’s brother to the house in rapidly failing health. The prevalence of and attitudes toward AIDS speak to the unique perspective of a 1990s exclusively gay cohort, and the comfortably frank and close-knit network of who’s slept with whom might feel unfamiliar to some viewers, but the emotions behind these connections are universal; overall, the show is a fair and fond look at people weathering life — and doing it together.

Darkness and danger shroud the vexing Mercury Fur, the controversial Philip Ridley play. Still, no one can say that boundary-shoving Who Wants Cake? didn’t know what it was getting into with this production: its promotional materials point to the many patrons who have walked out on other productions, brandishing the fact like a medal. In this staging, director Joe Plambeck shows particular skill at heightening the shock factor by bolstering the show’s emotional core. The result is a play with the potential to turn stomachs and to wither hearts.

The cryptic plot is learn-as-you-go. Brothers Elliot (Jon Ager) and Darren (Nico Ager) break into an empty apartment of a condemned building, at first lit only by their flashlights, and deem it an acceptable locale for the night’s party. Between the content warnings displayed on the theater’s walls and programs and the surroundings, it’s clear whatever they mean by “party” is more nefarious than balloons and cake, but the specifics are unraveled by miniscule degrees only as the other players begin to arrive. The play’s uninterrupted two hours unfold in real time on a wave of maniacal energy, frequently driven by Elliot. With the party bumped up on the schedule by several days, there’s barely time to get ready, and many of the interactions are fueled with getting the preparations on track: cleaning the apartment (a fine wreck of a set by Katie Orwig); collecting the Party Piece (Scott Wilding), some kind of human accessory, to be dressed by the transsexual Lola (Vince Kelley); directing fellow squatter and hanger-on Naz (Alex D. Hill) to perform various grunt functions; and convincing the fearsome ringleader Spinx (Patrick O’Connor Cronin) that everything is proceeding according to plan. Often bickering, always moving, the characters insult each other using strings of unrelated racial slurs; they are all fountains of invective, but little more could be expected from such a band of droogs.

The 1980s were such magical times, with pop fads to spare and frightening, untrustworthy, Medusa-like woman creatures grabbing for and holding power in the workplace like never before. Ancient Greece was also probably magical. Playwrights Alana McNair and Kate Wilkinson prove these are two great tastes that taste great together in Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, the inaugural production of Who Wants Cake? now returning to celebrate a full run at the Ringwald four years later. Directed by and starring Joe Bailey, the current offering skirts the line between straight-faced parody and cheeky, winking camp that keeps the laughs rolling.

Most people know the basic story of the bunny-boiler film upon which the play is based: a man has a brief fling that comes back to haunt him in the most nefarious of ways. The play doesn’t bother with movie character names, instead identifying the players as we know them best: suave protagonist Michael Douglas (Jon Ager), cloying wife Anne Archer (Melissa Beckwith), child most gently described as homely and slow Ellen Hamilton Latzen (Tim Kay), and indomitable home-wrecking force of nature Glenn Close (Bailey). Also contributing to the proceedings is a Greek chorus of four (Suzan M. Jacokes, Richard Payton, Joe Plambeck, and Dyan Bailey) whose heavy-handed intoning damns the man who steps out on his wife and family. Skipping ahead to the most memorable scenes and crucial plot points, the play smartly flies by at eighty minutes, just enough to satisfy without wearying of its premise. From the meteoric career rise of the protagonist that cannot go unpunished to the bloody bathtub showdown, the play works as both a rough-and-tumble spoof of the film and as a goof on the implausible, severe cautionary tales of Greek tragedy.

There's a show before the show in playwright John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves; for this Who Wants Cake? production, director Joe Bailey cleverly stashes it in the corner and gives it all the excitement of a preflight safety presentation. Whatever, guy, the atmosphere deadpans, as a flop-sweaty fellow plays piano with his fingers, sings with his mouth, and begs for adulation with every other molecule of his being. Instead, most of the Ringwald's listening audience — quite possibly the entire universe — is rolling its collective eyes at Artie Shaughnessy.

Played by Dave Davies, Artie is a zookeeper by day and a middling songwriter by night. Energized by his new lady love, the headstrong Bunny (Melissa Beckwith), he finally feels ready to take on the entertainment world with a handful of ditties and a dream (oh, and a lifelong tie to the biggest director in the film industry). Artie holds his Hollywood future with Bunny in front of him like a gem, but below the surface there is an undercurrent of feet-dragging, the source of which is Bananas (Lisa Jesswein), Artie's mentally ill wife. Given the play's 1965 setting, her treatment is inherently troubling: Artie force-feeds her pills whenever she emotes more than a groggy stupor, and Bunny talks about her like a piece of furniture even when she's in the room. But the primary strength of this production is in its veering tones; from a paper-thin blossoming infatuation set to music, to Looney Tunes–worthy chase scenes, to a vast sounding board of pathos, Bailey and company shift between and bleed together the disparate parts of a bleakly dark yet shimmering comedy.

Harry Kondoleon's Christmas on Mars is about looking for redemption in the wrong places, not outer space or even Christmas per se. Directed by Jamie Warrow, this Who Wants Cake? production pins its hopes on moving forward at the expense of the past. Can one baby save four people? In the world of this comedy, probably not.

Audrey (Warrow) works at a casting agency, where she met charming model boyfriend Bruno (Jon Ager); at the play's start, they're scoping out an empty Manhattan apartment (set design by Warrow). Marriage and children aren't necessarily on their radar, until he proposes and she reveals that she's pregnant. Yet even as they plan for their future, it's their pasts that keep dogging them; their respective baggage takes human form, that of Bruno's desperate roommate, Nissim (Joel Mitchell), and Audrey's wealthy mother, Ingrid (Leah Smith). Nissim holds forth about his ten years living with Bruno in an incredible series of paranoid monologues; Mitchell is a churning font of self-indulgent stories about sad childhoods and pity-based friendship, fairly sweating out his codependent need for Bruno. Audrey's naked distaste and distrust for her mother is explained by Ingrid's pathetic story of regrettable, irrevocable decisions and inability to resist male attention. When fast friends Ingrid and Nissim learn about the baby, they use the news to wrangle another chance with the person bent on cutting them out.

Not content to leave its Ringwald home inactive, Who Wants Cake? has actually mounted a second, concurrent production this Halloween season: Conor McPherson's Shining City. Although markedly smaller and subtler than the company's blood-smeared Evil Dead: The Musical, this "contemporary ghost story" is no second-string production. With the right attention to atmosphere and a foundation of noteworthy performances, this understated piece masks its considerable power to rattle the suggestible viewer.

The structure of McPherson's long one-act script is in itself daring, fleshing out parallel stories and leaving it to the viewer to puzzle out how and why they complement and inform each other. The action takes place in the office of new therapist Ian (Jamie Richards) and follows the progress of recently widowed patient John (Joe Bailey), who fears his late wife is haunting him. Sessions with John are balanced by scenes from Ian’s personal life, including a blazing fight with Neasa (Cassandra McCarthy), the mother of his child, and a hesitant, clumsy scene with a stranger (Matthew Turner Shelton). Contrasting scenes in which Ian participates with ones in which he merely listens is certainly an interesting choice, one that deepens the character and reminds the viewer that this isn’t some kind of horror movie — life goes on as usual, even when one person is battling with literal and figurative ghosts.

"Dying is easy; comedy is hard"? Try both at once. In large part, what makes Evil Dead: The Musical such cultish fun is its dedication to reproducing the original horror films' gore and suspense, woven right into the utterly insane campiness of its silly tunes and raunchy dialogue. They could scare the wits out of you if they wanted to, and they don't mind letting you know it.

After its madly successful production last year, Who Wants Cake? has partnered with Olympia Entertainment and resurrected the musical for another Halloween run, but this time the Deadites have taken to downtown Detroit's City Theatre. With some of the same cast, the same director (Joe Plambeck), and the same creative team, the result is a production that looks and feels happily familiar, but plays out on an enormous stage that set designer Tommy LeRoy makes into a playground for Jen and Ted Hansen's mystical array of special effects. Everything is supersized, from the cabin walls to the knick-knack assortments to the taxidermied moose head, with no drop in quality. Blood fountains, Michele LeRoy's dazzling lighting, sound effects, and an unseen three-piece band exist together in practically perfect harmony with a hardworking cast that captures the delicate balance between homage and mockery.

Self discovery does not equal happily ever after. This is the bitter pill served up in Douglas Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed, in which heartache lies not in life's random unfairness, but in the willful choices made by people in a position to hurt each other. As directed by Joe Bailey, this Who Wants Cake? production is an emotionally bloody work wrapped up in the tenderest of love stories.

Providing the framework of the play is Diane (Suzan M. Jacokes), Hollywood agent to rising star Mitchell (Vince Kelley). Diane knows her client is gay, even when he isn't fully ready to admit it; she also knows how quickly and completely that fact would hobble his film career. Mitchell's awakening comes in the form of Alex (Matthew Turner Shelton), a straight-identifying rent boy summoned to the wasted actor's New York hotel room. The first-act scenes are permeated by nervous timidity, a reflection of Kelley's believably pained reluctance and half-hearted denial, as the men accept by halting degrees their deep emotional and physical attraction. Caustic, comic Jacokes dismissively presides over these developments, as Diane exhibits her skills as narrator, talent wrangler, sharklike negotiator, and almost-soulless problem solver.

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, but that's only part of the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world that is Sordid Lives: It's a Drag! The Who Wants Cake? production of Del Shores's Sordid Lives swaps genders across the board, with female roles played by men and male roles played by women, but whether it's even possible to further skew the already distorted and tawdry proceedings of one small Texas town is up for debate.

In a community where everybody knows everybody's business, the nightmare of losing a parent becomes even worse in light of the embarrassing details of her demise. Yes, sister, mother, grandmother, and scandalously uninhibited of late Peggy Ingram has suffered a truly saucy, lusty death, which sets off shock waves through her family and friends that forces them together and allows them to right longstanding wrongs. To explain the relationships among the dozen characters would require a flow chart which, if attempted, would probably buckle under its own weight and implode. However, Shores uses careful, corroborating exposition and liberal amounts of gossip to bring the viewer up to speed; in the moment, what needs to be understood comes across well.

The promotional material for Who Wants Cake?'s Die! Mommie! Die! gives a big, unsubtle wink to the viewer. "IN 3D!," it cackles, because in contrast to TV and movie entertainments, live theater is inherently three-dimensional, no glasses required. As adorable as the joke is, it's especially fitting for this campy parody, deliciously overacted and overproduced in order to reproduce the sensation of a B-movie genre that director Joe Plambeck likes to call psycho-biddy. Essentially, take Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and turn it up to eleven.

There's murder and mystery to spare in this action-driven comedy by Charles Busch. Former singing sensation Angela Arden (Joe Bailey) had a career that publicly tanked in the wake of her twin sister's tragic death. A dozen or so years later, the 1967 Angela is trapped in her loveless marriage with diminishing-returns producer Sol Sussman (Alan Madlane) and saddled with a hateful daughter (Melissa Beckwith) and criminally dim son (Vince Kelley). Then Angela hits upon a way out, namely murder, one that takes a truly unorthodox — and wickedly funny — form. The devilish act is followed by: threats of murder, more murder, suspicions of murder, flinging around murder accusations, extracting confessions of murder, solving murders. The cast is rounded out by two Who Wants Cake? newcomers, both from Go Comedy! just around the corner: Suzan M. Jacokes is the hard-swilling, Bible-thumping maid not so secretly in love with Sol, and Bryan Lark is the tennis pro who uses his sole talent of insatiable sexual prowess for leverage with nearly the entire family.

When one attends a play with two intermissions, one expects a marathon. Yet through the superhuman efforts of its actors, the Who Wants Cake? production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly better approximates a three-hour sprint. Fueled by cocaine and self-importance, the characters spew paranoia and cerebral nonsense at each other, rarely managing to actually converse. Marijuana doesn't even slow them down, even though they smoke plenty. The dichotomy created by this cruelly vivid world is the fascination of the antihero: although I personally wouldn't want to interact with these people for any length of time, the remarkable performances behind the characters make them intriguing to study.

The play concerns 1980s Hollywood and a group of men somewhere in the process of being chewed up and spit out by the business. All the action takes place at the home of casting directors Eddie (Stephen Blackwell) and Mickey (Jon Ager), who, together with actor Phil (Joel Mitchell) and writer Artie (Charles Reynolds), form an alliance of superiority and derision sufficient to make the crass, disrespectful guys of Swingers look like Cub Scouts. Blackwell is paranoid and listless; Mitchell once again reinvents the lovable hateable; Reynolds tries achingly hard to fit in, even as he's belittled for his successes; and Ager's cool unflappability is his best work — at least that I've seen — to date. The men are at their peak in a long scene at the beginning of the second act, all playing off each other easily, so comfortably ingrained in their odious roles. Pitch-perfect direction by Joe Bailey generates masterful, layered beats that flow from hilarious group storytelling to tandem solitude.

I honestly can't think of a better description for the concept behind [title of show], the newest production by Who Wants Cake? at the Ringwald, than the scene in Spaceballs in which the characters (incongruously) pop in the VHS of Spaceballs to spy on what happens in a future scene. But first, they cue up the very part of the movie in which they're watching the movie, forming a picture-in-picture of sorts. One character tries to explain it, and both in real time and on the monitor, he says, "You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now."

In the same vein, creators Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell decided to write a musical about writing a musical, starring them and two of their friends (as themselves). So if they say something while writing the show ("Even this?"), if they take their shirts off while preparing for the show (yep), it goes in the show. The original draft was finished in three weeks for submission to a festival. It was a big hit there, and again off-Broadway, and finally enjoyed a run on Broadway, all the while starring them and two of their friends (as themselves). That's not just the history of the musical, that is the musical. Everything that happens now, is happening now.

It's fitting that Based on a Totally True Story was a late entry on the Who Wants Cake? schedule; the script's structure is sometimes reminiscent of a placeholder. Everything from the "based on" of the title to the unassuming candor of the narrative suggests that this is not so much a play by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, but a between-plays struggle with some personal demons, a writing exercise that turned out too good to discard.

Despite that description evoking some self-indulgent drama class exercise, director Joe Bailey's staging is pleasantly surprising in its frequent effectiveness. The story revolves around The Flash comic writer and playwright Ethan Keene (Vince Kelly), who weathers unbelievable success and personal anguish in parallel, and explains the unfolding events while clearly reticent to sort out to what extent each influenced the other. The role does not command the stage; instead, Kelly is enchantingly humble even as he plays notes of discomfort and anxiety, manifesting little tics that blossom into hilarious deliveries, but always with an undercurrent of regret — it's his story, but perhaps he wishes parts of it weren't.

For its holiday mainstage show, Who Wants Cake? brings out the big guns: Joe Plambeck and Joe Bailey, the powerhouse at the company's helm. Directed by Jamie Richards, The SantaLand Diaries & Season's Greetings is described as a double bill; it draws its name from the titles of the two David Sedaris pieces presented, the former an autobiographical essay recounting the writer's experiences as a Macy's elf, the latter a fictitious — I hope — presentation of a housewife's annual Christmas newsletter.

The two halves of the play are decidedly distinct, as advertised, one narrated and the other in character, one man dressed in an elf costume and the other in winter white with kitten heels, one full of real-life crazies and the other invented craziness. Each has a surprisingly different tone, but together they deliver a cohesive blow to the merry and bright. This sort of anti-Christmas view is unique in that it skewers from within instead of without — rather than hovering at the fringes and throwing barbs, this show derives its humor from characters that stood so close to the Christmas spirit, they got burned.

I am not a Halloween person. Nor am I a scary-movie person. Had I not felt obligated to get the full experience for this review, I would never have chosen to sit in the designated "splash zone" at a theater with posters warning, "There will be blood!" Which explains why I took my seat for Evil Dead: The Musical, at the farthest reaches of the splash zone, with a bandana covering my hair and my torso sheathed in a scented trash bag. I was skeptical, but game. This exposition is necessary in order to put the following in its proper context: I loved every single minute.

The play is a fast-moving interpretation of the Evil Dead series of films, which I have never seen because of my aforementioned avoidance of yuckiness. Five college students — protagonist Ash, his girlfriend, his sister, his best friend, and the girl his best friend is nailing — have the brilliant idea to spend their spring break alone, in the woods, in an abandoned cabin. They accidentally summon demons from another dimension, and one by one become possessed or worse. As the plot unfolds, the students, and a handful of other characters, sing their hearts out even as they are being shot and dismembered.