Who's That Lady?
Hanbury as Mrs. Smith.
Image credit: Marshall Franklin Long
The man sitting across the table from me at Spyhouse on Nicollet is passionate and animated about the current state of theater and how he would like to change it—by bringing intensity, spirit and anarchic smarts to audiences. He’s also freed up from his day job, and has Saturday stubble to show for it; it’s only when he allows his voice to rise to a hysterical, booming register that I see his inner Mrs. Smith.
“Everyone knows a woman like Mrs. Smith—women of a certain age,” says David Hanbury of the character he will channel at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater this month. “She’s going to actualize herself after 30 years of psychoanalysis and 12-step therapy. It’s a little bit of Blanche Dubois, that send-up of propriety. And then there’s my love of big physical performance, athletic physicality and rock’n’ roll. I’m also a frustrated metal star.”
The conversation veers between Hanbury’s years spent in Boston’s Gold Dust Orphans, a theater company specializing in satire and drag, his time earning an MFA in acting from Brown University and his arrival in Minnesota in 2007 for Workhaus Collective’s God Save Gertrude, when he worked with playwright Deborah Stein to create a punk-rock riff on Hamlet. More riffage is implied when Hanbury confesses his dedication to guitar gods Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Eddie van Halen.
“Mrs. Smith allows me to be a rock star,” confesses Hanbury.
Defining Mrs. Smith is a slippery proposition; Hanbury mentions how she emerged from his subconscious after losing his mother and brother in recent years. “She’s this wealthy, eccentric woman with no kids and no husband after 14 marriages,” he says. “She’s completely enamored with New Age philosophy and psychiatry, new psychiatric medications on the market and alternative treatments.”
In her earlier incarnations (Mrs. Smith Presents . . . and Mrs. Smith’s Halloween Spooktacular), she posited her central dilemma: her beloved cat Carlyle has gone missing. Along the way, she takes time to recount her philanthropic efforts, shred on the guitar and toss in the odd Nirvana cover. This month’s Pussy Pen sees her involuntarily incarcerated. Hanbury co-writes the piece with Louisville’s PJ McWhiskers, and performers including Afrodite abet the proceedings.
After stints in Boston and New York, Hanbury has put down roots locally and started his own company called The Sisters Boil. For all of Mrs. Smith’s daftness, Hanbury is clearly intent on making a mark on the Twin Cities, citing his collaborators’ serious performing experience and generally coming across like a dynamo in search of an outlet. For the moment, though, his alter ego has her own needs—and creates her own reality around her when Hanbury allows himself to become lost in character.
“I was on a barstool for a fundraising appearance, and it was a rough place—not a place where Mrs. Smith would be found,” Hanbury recalls. “And there was this drunk half passed out. Mrs. Smith said to him, ‘I took a Benadryl this morning, and just woke up on this barstool.’ This guy looks at her and says ‘Yeah. I know what that’s like.’ That’s when I realized there was something really fun about this.”
With that, Hanbury is off down Eat Street, a regular guy in civilian clothes—with a crazy lady inside him waiting for her next opportunity to live and breathe.
Pussy Pen plays the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater through May 22.
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