Andy Rogow, founding director of Island City Stage, has always wanted to stage a play by the legendary Charles Busch. The New York-based playwright, who has developed an inimitable style of theatrical drag, stars in plays he writes for himself, portraying over-the-top female divas who seem trapped in time during Hollywood’s golden age.

But how do you find the right actor to play one of Busch’s femme fatales? Rogow’s desire to produce a Busch play became a reality when he crossed paths with actor Kris Andersson, who called him during the COVID pandemic. Andersson, who has toured with his own one-person show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” for nearly two decades, wanted to create a second chapter for his character Dixie Longate.

“I’ve been doing my show for years, and during the pandemic I wanted to do something to keep my work relevant.” The Fort Lauderdale-based actor had requested to rent Rogow’s Island City Stage in Wilton Manors to shoot his latest film, “Dixie’s Happy Hour.”

He recorded the show, which was successfully performed virtually during COVID and also ran live on the Island City Stage in 2020.

“After that, I looked for a project where I could actually work with Kris,” says Rogow.

Fast forward to the final performance of Island City Stage’s 12th season. In “Die, Mommie, Die,” Andersson reprises Busch’s role as Angela Arden, a Hollywood cabaret singer in obscurity who plots to kill her husband so she can be with her younger lover.

“Die, Mommy, Die!” premieres at the Wilton Manors Theater on Thursday, August 22nd and runs through Sunday, September 22nd.

It is a parody and homage to the melodramas of the 1960s that became known as Grande Dame Guignol cinema, sometimes referred to as “hagsploitation” and “hag horror” films. The genre began in 1962 with Whatever Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring real-life arch-enemies and grand dames Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. They were two of many movie stars who signed up for a melodramatic horror film to boost their waning careers.

“I think our audience will be able to identify with the 1960s films that starred Crawford, Davis and Susan Hayward. Back then, these aging divas were basically making melodramatic soap operas, but they still showed the 1940s acting style, which was overly dramatized,” says Rogow, who is directing “Die, Mommie, Die.”

With opening night still a few weeks away, Rogow is getting ready for rehearsal while eating a takeout meal from a white Styrofoam container that includes chicken “Pollo Tropical” and rice and beans. He is constantly interrupted by set designers, prop men and stagehands asking about the placement of a rug on the floor or the flowers on a table in the very Hollywood-esque set. It is the living room of Angela Arden’s LA home, drenched in the glamour of old Hollywood, the sofa and chairs upholstered in a French lime green.

“It was very important to me that the set make some sort of comedic statement. I wanted to make sure that when the audience sees the set, they know it’s a comedy,” Rogow says. When asked if that’s part of his directorial imprint that he puts on the show, he agrees. “I definitely think I bring the visuals to it for sure.”

Rogow says it’s part of the overall look and feel of the show, which he describes as “really going for the style – played up a little more satirically.” But Andersson and Rogow agree it’s a balancing act to make sure Arden comes across the way Busch intended.

“The character was born from Charles Busch. I don’t see her as an actor playing her in a woman’s costume. It’s not about dressing up in a woman’s costume. It’s just about a man taking on this female character. (The playwright) was obsessed with these movies as a kid and could just absorb who these women were. Even though he was portraying them satirically, he still knew exactly who they were and could play them as they were. That’s why I realized I had the right person for the role in Kris. You can’t just hire a drag queen just because they’re making a drag show out of it.”

Rogow says what makes the play so different is that the audience knows it’s a man, but the way it’s written, the other characters refer to Angela Arden as a woman. “Then there are these sexual innuendos and relationships that make it even a little bit weirder that it’s a man.”

Andersson says playing Arden is “an easy mountain for me to climb. I’ve done drag as Dixie for so many years. I’m not saying the role isn’t challenging.” He also enjoys not being alone on stage, as he did with his one-person show. “I kind of forgot how much fun it is to work with a cast and a director because I haven’t done that in so many years.”

Veteran South Florida actress Elizabeth Dimon plays one of the key roles: Bible-reciting, whiskey-bottle-toting, Richard Nixon-supporting housekeeper Bootsie Carp, who has some secrets of her own.

Dimon says she was “a little nervous” when she was cast in the role of “Die, Mommy, Die!”

“I thought, ‘I’ve never played this kind of role before,'” she says, referring to the exaggerated melodrama called for in the script.

And reciting the many Bible passages written for Bootsie? “Well, I was the child of a Presbyterian preacher,” reveals Dimon.

“Yes, Bootsie tried her luck, but she has the Lord on her side,” says Dimon, whose character has some surprises of her own in store.

Other characters include Arden’s husband, film producer Sol Sussman (played by Troy J. Stanley), tennis pro and Arden’s young lover Tony Parker (played by Clay Cartland), their father-loving daughter Edith (Susanna Ninomiya), and gay son Lance (Kevin Veloz), who shares a secret language with his mother.

Busch said the plot was influenced by Sophocles’ 5th-century Greek tragedy “Electra,” in which a woman and her lover kill her husband and their children subsequently seek revenge.

“Yes, it’s a Greek tragedy… unknown identities, children and parents and their love-hate relationship and the violence that can arise from it. Although the play is set in the 1960s, the story itself is actually somehow timeless,” says Rogow.

WHAT: “Die, Mommy, Die!” by Charles Busch

WHERE: Island City Stage, 2304 North Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors

WHEN: 7pm Thursday, 8pm Friday and Saturday, 5pm Sunday. Open from Thursday 22 August to Sunday 22 September.

COST: $40, $45, $55 (Mimosa Sunday, September 8)

INFORMATION: 954-928-9800 or islandcitystage.org

This story was produced by the Broward Arts Journalism Alliance (BAJA), an independent journalism program of the Broward County Cultural Division. Visit ArtsCalendar.com for more stories about the arts in South Florida.