"Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!" are fighting words and, in her show of that name, subtitled "The Penny Arcade Sex & Censorship Show," which played at the Community House on June 19, thanks to the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, Penny (Susana Ventura) Arcade offers eloquent, trenchant political responses to those who would fling them around as taunts.

Arcade, chameleon-like, assumes several guises to tell her tale and give her provocative answers. As a switchboard operator in a brothel, using different names and voices, depending on the caller, she talks tough to some of the customers and, with understanding, sets up a scene for a bank president with an infantile fantasy. As a Bible Belt-born hooker, she rails against legalizing prostitution-it'll drive down the price; against competition from third world women, used to working cheaply; and against born-again Christians and hypocritical politicians. She makes pithy observations about women who marry for money, and gays in the military-and in the Vatican!

As the adopted daughter of gay men, Arcade rebels against a steady diet of Garland and Streisand, and learns, to her dismay, from Pines clones in the early '70s, that "Faghags are obsolete." She lives through the disco era; recalls legendary Stonewall-era Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) queen Marcia P. (for Pay-it-no-mind) Johnson and the Warhol trinity of Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling; reminds us of the nightmarish early days of the AIDS crisis; and fondly remembers the iconic Quentin Crisp, all of which adds to her regret for the passing of the gay world she grew up in.

Arcade confides in us about her youthful obsession with the Amazons, as well as about bondage and spanking scenes with some of the other girls. Her confession makes the priest hot, she realizes that "Barbie is a slut," rebuffs mashers, and gets sent to Catholic reform school, where all the girls are in love with Mother Mark. She maintains that "bisexual faghags will have their day," but that "there's never been a better time to be a dyke than 2010!"

Arcade holds forth about growing up in a Southern Italian immigrant family, where she got beaten for being opinionated and for living in her imagination. She shows a film about her mother, describing her patois as, "I've forgotten how to speak Italian and I never learned to speak English." She bemoans getting into relationships with people with intimacy issues and is inspired by "I Will Survive" to pull through it all. She strips completely, with a recorded speech about censorship as accompaniment and the Stars and Stripes as an accountrement, and contrasts that "you can't show a breast on television" with the true obscenity of violence against lesbians and gays and other minorities, not to mention the obscenely destructive oil spill.

Assisting, with a pre-show and, periodically, during the show itself is a sextet of erotic dancers, including Ken "Angel" Davis, who sports a sailor hat on his shaved head, a jockstrap, and an American flag as a wrap, and Akynos, a zaftig woman, with two-tone hair, who bares her breasts. The rest of the troupe consists of Miguel Anaya, Deity Delgado, Jeffrey R. Freeze, and Erin Markey.
Catch "Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!" if it comes your way. You'll be in for a memorable evening.