LATimes.com – By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
If fortune smiles on “Most Wanted,” a musical about a fame-hungry serial killer who saves his last bullet for himself, the theater world may have on its hands another testament to the power of drag queens.
For nearly six years, off and on, three respected theater pros — Mark Bennett, Jessica Hagedorn and Michael Greif — have been grappling with its risky, unorthodox material. The template for “Most Wanted,” which begins a two-week workshop production today at La Jolla Playhouse, is the life of Andrew Cunanan, an alluring, chameleonic party boy from the San Diego gay-bar scene. In 1997, he went on an unexplained, 2 1/2 -month cross-country killing spree, climaxing in his infamy-sealing trophy killing of fashion designer Gianni Versace.
The show’s artistic aim, its creators say, is to use the Cunanan saga as a lens for examining America’s celebrity culture, a society in which people whose only assets may be a sexy come-on and a willingness to parade misbehavior in public can become objects of mass fascination.