An Inconvenient Corpse

Hollywood lore is chockablock with scandals: stories either apocryphal or verified that speak to the decadence, the secrets, the untoward desires and unfulfilled longings of a class of deified beings living one life on the screen and quite another off it. Errol Flynn was arrested for the sexual assault of...

By John Thomason

March 20, 2014

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Hollywood lore is chockablock with scandals: stories either apocryphal or verified that speak to the decadence, the secrets, the untoward desires and unfulfilled longings of a class of deified beings living one life on the screen and quite another off it. Errol Flynn was arrested for the sexual assault of a minor; Jean Harlow’s husband inexplicably took his own life two months after marrying the starlet; Lana Turner’s movies had nothing on the real-life drama she survived in 1958, when her daughter, in self-defense, fatally stabbed Turner’s gangster boyfriend. Clark Gable Slept Here, the latest world premiere from South Florida playwright Michael McKeever, satirizes this sort of career-shattering Tinseltown scandal and the efforts of a few desperate handlers to prevent its discovery. A macho action star — whom we never see in the play — is off to the Golden Globe Awards, leaving his entourage to deal with a problem in his suite that won’t go away: a dead male prostitute. McKeever has said he ranks Clark Gable Slept Here among his top three plays, and he’ll star alongside Lela Elam, Clay Cartland, Vanessa Elise, and Robert Johnson in this examination of manliness in the ersatz world of Hollywood. The play kicks off Thursday and runs through April 6 at Zoetic Stage at the Adrienne Arsht Center (1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami). Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $45. Call 305-949-6722 or visit arshtcenter.org.
March 20-April 6, 7:30 p.m., 2014

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