P-town's angry clown: comic and playwright Ryan Landry combines nudity and activism to defend the spirit of his beloved Provincetown. (theater).

"Being gay just isn't what it used to be," says Provincetown, Mass., playwright and performer Ryan Landry. "There is an embracing of mediocrity. Circuit party culture is a sheep mentality. They would dance into the gas chambers of Nazi Germany if Junior Vasquez was the DJ."

With his savage, intelligent wit and his "I can't believe he just said that" charm, Landry has been convulsing audiences since he and director-actor Jim Byrne started the anarchic drag troupe the Gold Dust Orphans in the mid 1990s.

But lately he's feeling pushed. Not only does Landry see gay culture as being on the decline, he sees the open minds and open spaces of his chosen home in danger of becoming extinct.

When he first visited P-town almost 20 years ago, hippies still strummed guitars on street corners and drag queens chatted with Portuguese fishermen in front of rustic art galleries. Now condominiums outnumber sand dunes and Commercial Street is clogged with circuit boys and yuppies in SUVs. "It's like watching a parent die," says Landry. "You're watching the cancer grow."

Landry's latest play, The Gulls--inspire'd by The Birds--has seagulls attacking Provincetown, angry over the way humans have mined the place. The seagulls are puppets, by the way: Think Hitchcock meets Sid and Marty Krofft.

Already a local institution, hosting a weekly cabaret called Showgirls at the Crown and Anchor Inn (home to all his shows), Landry has been receiving increasing national attention, with theaters in Seattle and Omaha planning to produce his work. In his informal P-town guide, Land's End, Michael Cunningham describes Landry's appearances with his wanna-be rock group, Space Pussy, as a personal favorite.

Margaret Cho is also a friend and a fan. "Forget cabala. I'm a Ryanist," says Cho, who has often delighted P-town audiences by hopping up on the stage alongside her friend. "He is a provocateur. He is both highbrow and lowbrow--equally unafraid to make incendiary political points and show his hole."

Yet P-town's freewheeling scene, once perfect for Landry's clothing-optional antics, seems to be becoming more prudish. In 2001, in a move that surprised people nationwide, the town tried unsuccessfully to close down a performance of the innocuous Naked Boys Singing, saying it violated Provincetown's vague anti-adult entertainment bylaw. Now the case is tied up in court, and no nudity is allowed in town performances until it's resolved.

Still, one of Landry's bawdiest traditions is safe for now: He ends every Showgirls performance with his genitalia tucked between his legs as he sings "Beaver," a send-up of Peggy Lee's "Fever." For a while there were rumblings that the song would get Landry closed down. But thanks to a compromise, Landry is still allowed to sing his song. As long as "it" stays put, he isn't considered legally nude.

Landry is unmollified. "There was real freedom there," he says. "Not all change is good. There are some places that should be left alone. My work is about more than just my show. It's about Provincetown, and I won't let it go without a fight."

Desroches also writes for The Village Voice.