Want to satisfy your voyeuristic desire to know intimate details about the lives of the famous and infamous? Do you want to satisfy that desire without the embarrassment of self-identifying as an US Weekly subscriber? Enter Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words, an Off Broadway show that manages to elevate salacious celebrity autobiographies into topnotch comedic performance art.

The concept is simple—onstage performers read excerpts from real celebrity memoirs to a live audience.The effect is nothing short of bellyaching hilarity. Capturing numerous awards and accolades along the way, Celebrity Autobiography originated in Los Angeles, was adapted for a Bravo TV-special and has been running in New York for three years.

The recent legalization of gay marriage in New York State and the NYC Gay Pride Parade provided a festive backdrop for Celebrity Autobiography: Gay Pride Edition, which was presented at the Gramercy Theatre on June 25, 2011. With a cast and material that rotates with each performance, Saturday’s show included performances by Mario Cantone, Rachel Dratch, Sharon Gless, Kristen Johnston, Eugene Pack, Dayle Reyfel, Mo Rocca, and Michael Urie; and featured words from a diverse collection of celebrities such as Ivana Trump, Ricky Martin, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Mo Rocca, correspondent to CBS News Sunday Morning and panelist on National Public Radio’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, read the words of Geraldo Rivera and Cher during the performance. As a veteran performer in the show, he remarked on the cast members’s varied approaches to the material—who will impersonate the celebrity and who will deliver his own reading; who will “become the celebrity” and who will “be themselves.” While Rocca admittedly mimed a few dramatic hair swings while reading accounts of Cher’s love of M&Ms and microwaved sweet potatoes, generally he opted for a more deadpan approach to the readings, remarking “…sometimes less is more.”

The show began with individual readings and built up to something the show’s creator, Eugene Pack, called “mashups.” Mashups are readings of multiple autobiographies that are interrelated by celebrities’ relationships with one another. The technique climaxed with engrossing segments from the autobiographies of Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—one of Hollywood’s most scandalous love affairs.

Celebrity Autobiography strongly supports the notion that reality (or a celebrity’s recollection of reality) is far stranger than fiction. Some moments are so jaw-droppingly outrageous; it is hard to believe that the material is truly the celebrity’s own written words. It is equally as hard to believe that the celebrity’s public relations people green lighted those words to print. Take for instance, Madonna’s account of how she contracted crabs, Burt Reynolds’s reflections on Sally Field’s propensity to be a sore loser, Ricky Martin’s alter-ego “Kiki,” George Hamilton’s affinity for Girl Scouts and other “women” in uniform, and Dolly Parton’s admission that spitting out chewed food is better than being a “lard ass.” Nevertheless, Pack assures us, “We couldn’t make this stuff up…they wrote ‘em!” Nearly every bit of the show was amusing and most readings moved the audience to downright hysterics.

You will walk away from the performance in delightful appreciation of celebrities’s compulsion to pen private moments and make them publicly available. In addition, you will be grateful to Pack for giving these autobiographical gems a voice on stage. The love of laughter is all it will take to unite celebrity junkies and celebrity haters in unanimous enjoyment of Celebrity Autobiography.

Photos, from top:
Rachel Dratch (photo by Joan Marcus)
Michael Urie
Sharon Gless (photo by Justine Stephens)
Kristen Johnson (photo by Joan Marcus)

Celebrity Autobiography
The Gramercy Theater
127 East 23rd Street at Lexington Avenue
212-352-3101