The Little Lady and the Vamp : Lindsay Ridgeway’s criminal-minded tyke and Loren Freeman’s agent in drag have combined make the show-biz sendup ‘Ruthless!’ a hit with both the mainstream-with-kids crowd and a hipper, gay contingent

A row of extravagant hats, wigs and giant feathered who-knows-whats is perched on the ledge above the mirror. Actor Loren Freeman sits in front of the glass, facing a dressing table filled with containers of colored goop, as he paints layer upon layer of the stuff on his face.

The nightly transformation into agent Sylvia St. Croix, his role (and the only cross-dressed part) in “Ruthless!”--a musical at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills--is no quickie. Sylvia is a vamp. But, then, so’s the dinky blond Tina, played by 8-year-old Lindsay Ridgeway, who’s hanging out by his side.

Nobody upstages these gals. So hold onto your feather boas and check your powder, dolls. You have now entered the “Ruthless!” zone.

A “Beach Blanket Babylon” for Sam Yorty voters and Jerry Dunphy fans, “Ruthless!” is a show-biz sendup with book and lyrics by Joel Paley, music by Marvin Laird and costumes by Bob Mackie. It’s the story of Tina, a budding but criminal child star, and the women who surround her, including her daffy stage mom, a pushy agent and an acerbic critic.

When the show opened at the Canon Theatre in November, many critics responded with enthusiasm. Sylvie Drake, The Times’ theater critic emeritus, called it “ruthlessly unredeemable fun.” What makes this show stand out, though, is that it has been attracting two very different kinds of audiences: the mainstream, even family-dominated crowd, and a hipper, gay contingent.

“One night there was a birthday party for 12-year-old girls and they were sitting next to leather queens,” says Joan Stein, who produced this West Coast premiere with Elizabeth Williams. “It’s unusual to have a show where grandparents, parents, kids and people with a different lifestyle can come.”

“With a show that has a camp sensibility, a lot of times that does appeal to a more diverse audience,” Freeman says. “I wouldn’t want to do a show that was just for the Beverly Hills people or just for the avant-garde Santa Monica Boulevard group. That’s too insular.”

Freeman, in fact, may be partly responsible for the crossover. His work with precocious co-star Ridgeway is central to the show’s ability to appeal to two such ostensibly different crowds. And their rapport is emblematic of the show’s achievement:

Freeman: “Tell her the new thing he (director Joel Paley ) put in today . . . about the crowbar.”

Ridgeway: “Well, I kill for the part in the play that the other girl gets. So I say, ‘I wrapped a jump - rope around her fat neck and hit her in the knee with a crowbar and pushed her over the side of the catwalk.’ ”

Freeman: “Get it? Tonya Harding. Lindsay understands where the jokes are and she knows how to play them, the way a lot of other people her age don’t. I think about people that you’re just show business or you’re not. And she is.”

Ridgeway: “Thank you, Loren.”

Freeman: “You’re welcome.”

Ridgeway: “I’m giving him 20 bucks for that.”

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They’re an odd couple all right, even if they both do like to camp it up. Freeman, in fact, acknowledges that he had some initial apprehensions. Actors, after all, are traditionally warned about sharing the stage with children, puppies or helicopters.

“It had been a while since I’d worked with a little kid,” he says. “But we just started joking around so that she knew that I was a nice person and that I liked her. We tried to get comfortable with one another. Then we just ran with it.”

Freeman, 34, a native San Franciscan, trained at the American Conservatory Theatre and the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. He spent eight years in New York, before moving to Los Angeles four years ago.

And though Freeman has logged his share of TV (“Murphy Brown,” “Love & War,” “Who’s the Boss?”) and film roles (“Lionheart”) since then, he didn’t make his local stage debut until 1992. He won an L.A. Weekly award for his portrayal of the flamboyant Sammy Farrell in “Melody Jones,” the Dan Gerrity-Jeremy Lawrence adaptation of the David Galloway book, directed by Ron Link at the Cast Theatre.

A dark, brooding play set in a strip joint fronting for a gay bar, “Melody Jones” certainly wasn’t the kind of place you’d find a nice girl like Lindsay Ridgeway.

But anyway, Ridgeway was only 6 then. She was born in Riverside--where her parents, Lee and Ron, and sister Kelly, 7, still live--and first performed at age 4 with the Riverside Civic Light Opera. Since then she’s worked in commercials, TV (she’s currently a member of the Prank Patrol on “America’s Funniest People”) and the theater (the touring company of “Annie Warbucks”).

“Ruthless!” threw Freeman and Ridgeway together. And, coincidentally, the two actors share a droll, nearly deadpan sensibility, not to mention the all-important comic timing. They’re both kidders (so to speak), off stage and on.

“He reminds me of Jack Benny meets Paul Lynde and Roz Russell,” director Link says of Freeman. “He’s an actor who’s not afraid to cross that gender-bending line, who’s good in reality but isn’t afraid of superficiality. I think of him as a consummate clown, and he has a natural manic dark side.”

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And while Freeman garnered a following for his work in “Melody Jones,” he’s now acquiring a fan club of ladies who lunch. “Matinee ladies talk about my legs now,” he says. “They’re a little meaty for my taste, but I guess they like them.”

The approval may also be because Freeman doesn’t play St. Croix simply as a drag caricature.

“It’s a character, which is what I like,” he says. “There’s never anything revealed (that indicates that) I’m a man. I don’t think about the drag part when I’m up there. There are no drag jokes.”

Instead, his image for the character is as mainstream as a certain Andrew Lloyd Webber musical now playing in Century City.

“When I was 22, somebody cast me as Don Quixote in ‘Man of La Mancha’ and I didn’t know what to do,” Freeman recalls. “So I did what I’m doing in this: Norma Desmond, the Grand Guignol. (St. Croix) is tragic and there are funny things that happen to her, but she’s not a comedic character.”

The challenge is to keep that high emotional pitch without sacrificing all of the character’s veracity.

“It’s a funny thing when you’re out there playing real moments in this overblown setting,” Freeman says. “That’s really where the humor is, in the absurdity of the setting and the Bob Mackie clothes and the cartoonish ambience. I would like to be bigger than life. I think all actors would. I don’t think any of us want to be down to earth. It’s boring down there.”

“We are on Earth, Loren,” adds Ridgeway, who says Tina is “not like any other character that I’ve played; it’s a funnier part.” And Ridgeway plays Tina with an attitude that makes it seem as though she gets all the inside jokes. She also gets high marks from her co-workers:

Freeman: “She’s solid.”

Ridgeway: “What does that mean, Loren?”

Freeman: “You don’t goof up too much.”

Ridgeway: “No. (pause) Joan Ryan does.”

If Ryan, who plays Tina’s mother, minds the jab from her short-statured colleague, she doesn’t let on. “Lindsay is so professional it’s frightening,” she says. “You know something’s off if Lindsay is looking around. She can notice 1,000 things at once.”

There have, in fact, been a number of times when Ridgeway has been put to the test.

“In the second act, she comes out in a coat with an outfit underneath,” says Ryan, referring to Tina’s reappearance in prison togs. “Well, (one time) she had gotten dressed in a hurry and was trailing a hanger. I cracked up. But Lindsay just looked at me. And I thought, ‘Who is the adult here?’ ”

“I took (the hanger) off and put it on the coffee table,” Ridgeway says.

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Producers Stein and Williams could only wish for such a savvy young lead when they first saw “Ruthless!” during its Off Broadway run last year. But what they saw for sure was a show that was pulling in the same mix of gay and straight ticket buyers that it’s now attracting here.

“The ability to reach a diverse audience was one of the things that attracted us to the show,” Stein says. “It’s been greater than we expected, but we hoped for it.”

They didn’t just hope, though--they strategized. “My partner Elizabeth (Williams) and I have made a concerted effort to try and reach diverse audiences--from offering discount coupons on the back of grocery receipts, which generally reach homemakers, to having Loren Freeman appearing in costume and singing at a gay club called the Revolver,” Stein says.

“Ruthless!” has advertised in the gay press and taken part in the Gay and Lesbian Exhibition, a trade show of organizations owned, run by or catering to members of the gay and lesbian community. The “Ruthless” booth sold show tickets and T-shirts and also had costumed cast members on hand.

“We both have backgrounds in marketing,” says Stein, who, like Williams, is an Off Broadway veteran. “Elizabeth also produced ‘Crazy for You’ (in New York), which also has a big crossover audience, so we were able to examine some marketing plans from that.”

Along with canvassing the gay community, the producers have also been targeting school groups. “Kids love seeing other kids on-stage,” Stein says. “We have a lot of school groups that come, and we’ve invited principals and teachers to the show beforehand, because there’s a dark side and they have to be the ones to say if it’s OK.”

That dark side, however, might suggest to some that “Ruthless!” isn’t kiddie fare. “The things that are going on onstage are not as horrible as the things going on in the news, with Nancy Kerrigan,” Stein says. “I haven’t had any complaints from people who’ve brought their kids.”

Ridgeway says children aren’t likely to pick up Tina’s naughty behavior: “They understand that it’s, like, only a play and that I wouldn’t really do that and that nobody else would do that. They know it’s just fake.”

Nor, she says, is she herself likely to go rotten. “I know that I’m really not to say those things when I’m not performing,” Ridgeway says. “It’s just part of the play and it’s my character that says it. I would describe her as . . . “

“Bad?” Freeman offers.

“Bad, yeah--when she’s at school and not around her mom,” Ridgeway continues. “And she’s real sweet, like she doesn’t really know anything about what she did when she’s with her mother. I get the wig when I kill Louise, and I say, ‘What wig?’ and pretend I don’t know anything.”

But even if the dark side of the play is harmless, that still doesn’t mean “Ruthless!” is a kiddie show. Stein and Williams’ marketing notwithstanding, the humor is mostly made up of inside jokes that play off such old movies as “The Bad Seed,” “All About Eve” and “Gypsy.”

“It’s not really for kids,” Ridgeway says. “Kids would like some of the characters--the teacher is really funny; she always wears pencils in her hair--and the dancing. But they really wouldn’t get some of the jokes.”

“What about your friends who came on Sunday?” prompts Lindsay’s real-life mother, Lee Ridgeway.

Lindsay, who plans to be a dance teacher and a whale trainer as well as an actress, doesn’t budge on this one.

This, after all, is an actress who knows where she stands and how to take things in stride. Drag, for instance, isn’t necessarily something they teach you about in third grade.

But it really hasn’t been a big deal getting to know about these matters.

“The weirdest part was at the audition,” Freeman says. “I had heard that (other actors) came in drag, and I said, ‘Well, then I have to do it too.’ The first moment, I thought, ‘The poor little girl’s gonna wonder why I’m wearing this.’ ”

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Ridgeway, however, had been prepared.

“Somebody told me that a man plays the part of Sylvia, and I thought, ‘You know, I better warn Lindsay about this,’ ” says Lee Ridgeway, who accompanies her daughter to every show. “We were going into the parking lot, and I said, ‘There may be some guys here dressed like girls.’ So when she finally did see them, Lindsay just went over and said, ‘Oh.’ ”

“There were three of us,” Freeman says. “We looked like real-estate agents.”

Ridgeway: “I’m really not used to seeing men dressed as women and it’s new to me. At first it was, I dunno . . . I had to get used to it.”

Freeman (sotto voce): “She’s from Riverside. You know.”

Ridgeway: “And you’re from San Francisco.”

Freeman: “That says it all.”