“Glorious!” is the term of gushing approval one of Florence Foster Jenkins’ fawning friends uses to appraise the off-key vocal rantings of the once-notorious, tone-deaf socialite who bought her way into the annals of New York’s classical music scene in the early 1940s. Glorious is also the title of Peter Quilter’s recent, deliciously camp three-person play about the final months of Jenkins’ odd “career” and her vocal apotheosis at Carnegie Hall. Yes, Virginia, truth is always stranger than fiction ever imagines.

North Coast Repertory Theatre has mounted a pitch-perfect production of this comedy about a would-be diva who had no sense of pitch whatsoever. In Saturday’s (January 16) opening-night performance, Susan Deneaker’s Jenkins filled the tiny North Coast room with opera-sized emotions and vocal swoops (and I haven’t even begun to describe her singing), not to mention ceaseless mugging that conveyed a larger-than-life conviction of her musical gift.

In the few moments of self doubt Quilter scripts for her, Denaker lets the mask fall from her otherwise incessantly cheery visage just enough to let us know that she is not unaware that her sneering critics may have a point. Denaker’s greatest success is her ability to consistently sing off-key while still approximating the recognizable outline of the music the accompanist is producing from the stage-center grand. She does this with exuberance and a canny awareness of the garish posturing that passed for acting in the opera conventions of that period.

Her heaven-storming, outrageous “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute is a show-stopper, although as a music critic, I must point out that mid-aria in her version of Adele’s “Laughing Song” from Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Die Fledermaus, Denaker accidentally slipped back into the song’s actual tonality. I’m sure she will correct this fault in subsequent performances!

As her faithful piano accompanist, Cosme McMoon, David McBean shows that only a former diva (he was Miss Deep South in Pageant and Dr. Frank ‘n Furter in The Rocky Horror Show) really knows how to treat a diva, and he is nothing short of masterful. He incrementally moves his character’s initial horror over his employer’s complete lack of musical acumen and craft to gradual stages of accommodation and finally to a compassionate acceptance.

Yet McBean never lets the audience forget that he always knows the real score. When he describes Jenkins’ Carnegie Hall recital with its sold-out house as an “unqualified success,” his inflection of the adjective and arched eyebrow makes everyone understand he is insisting on both meanings of the phrase.

McBean’s own polished music-making—he croons a few Noel Coward tunes and serves up challenging accompaniments with panache—serves as a balm to soothe audience ears and nerves after the regular vocal assaults Denaker is required to unleash to keep the plot rumbling along.

Annie Hinton barely contains the relish with which she impersonates three auxiliary characters, especially Jenkins’ snarling, contemptuous maid Maria, who understands English but only answers her employer with fusillades of insults in Spanish, ignores explicit directions and finds endless ways to torment the hapless socialite. As Jenkins’ close friend Dorothy, Hinton is all sweetness and light, a Midwestern casserole of homey platitudes, frumpy hats and broad, flat vowels. Dorothy’s own flickering bulb is only a few watts brighter than Jenkins’, but Hinton finds the right balance of empathy and resignation for this hanger-on.

As the certifiably cultured society matron Mrs. Verrinder-Gedge, Hinton marches imperiously into one of Jenkins’ charity performances with a petition signed by serious classical music aficionados imploring the daft diva to stop her public caricatures of great music. (I will not spoil the effect for those who will attend the play by reporting what McBean does with this list.) Hinton’s moral rectitude is perfectly crowned by a glorious hat whose skyscraper plumage bristles with every word of outrage.

Renetta Lloyd’s period costumes are top drawer from head to toe. I coveted the sleek, tapered formal wear McBean sported once he was ensconced in Jenkins’ employ, and the women’s droopy dresses of pastel brocades evoke the war years’ austerity well. Of the outlandish costumes devised for Denaker in her performance mode—Jenkins exhibited a fetish for costumes that the term gaudy does not even begin to encompass—I was taken with her Spanish maiden ensemble, with its white lace mantilla only slightly smaller than a tablecloth for a hotel banquet table. And the angel costume with flappable wings? I can only resort to the refrain the loyal Cosme offers on so many occasions, “I am at a loss for words!”

Nothing subsequent in the play’s four scenes quite comes up to Marty Burnett’s first-act living room, Jenkins’ surprisingly tasteful apartment in Manhattan’s posh Hotel Seymore. Plush reds and golds glint everywhere, from the Oriental rug in front of the sofa to the velvet drapes behind, aided by Matt Novotny’s warm, effusive lighting. In another scene, the back wall of the Melotone Recording Studio—Jenkins financed her own recordings—had a refined, Deco look that was easy on the eyes.

Novotny’s coup de grace occurs at the finale, when Jenkins in her angel costume spins slowly in the dark at the far edge of the stage while McMoon narrates the play’s ending. Just a hint of overhead light dapples the diva, suggesting an ethereal ascension.

Why this production required two directors, Rosina Reynolds and Christopher H. Williams, is unexplained. The play has few of the technical challenges of The Mystery of Irma Vep. Nevertheless, the team has coaxed spirited and finely detailed performances from its cast and has kept the pace allegro con brio.

Quilter’s script is cleanly written, and his dialogue trips along briskly. He has made McMoon a gayer character than would have been acknowledged in that era, but at least his ear for campy double entendres is less brazen than that of, say, Charles Ludlam. The reappearing tag line about Noel Coward (a Jenkins fan, but not in the way she imagined) and that celebrity's gaggle of young male admirers became tiresome, however.

It is difficult to know if Quilter intended to write anything more than a reliable, humorous replacement vehicle for modest companies that have already revived Charlie’s Aunt too many seasons. In his script, he has Jenkins profess, “You can’t put a price tag on living your dreams.” So perhaps this true story wrapped in extravagant bows and ribbons is another self-help bromide to encourage authentic living.

From the chirpy conversations overheard at intermission, I can verify that the species of self-absorbed, cocooned, privileged females did not die out with Florence Foster Jenkins. It is alive and well in North County. Perhaps Quilter had them in mind.

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