Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Queers past, present, and future: BLOOD, SWEAT & QUEERS; MY SON’S A QUEER (BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO?); and PRINCE FAGGOT

• By drediman
• June 19, 2025
• No Comments

Now that we’re well into Pride Month, it’s about time that I start assessing the wide spectrum of LGBTQ+ themed plays that are currently gracing ours stages. Three of these productions, which I’ll discuss further below, depict a spectrum of queer lives past, present, and future. As per usual, read on for my thoughts.

BLOOD, SWEAT & QUEERS
Rehearsal for Truth Festival / Bohemian National Hall
Closed

Looking to the past was Untitled Theater Company No. 61’s production of Blood, Sweat, and Queers (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), an award-winning play by Czech playwright Tomás Dianiska that chronicles the life of Zenek Koubek, a transgender track and field star whose astonishing story has been all but lost to time, until now. Although the facts of Koubek’s life are extraordinary to say the least, Dianiska’s new play — one of the centerpiece offerings of this year’s Truth International Theater Festival, an annual series showcasing contemporary European theater — feels more like a rough, episodic outline rather than a cohesive dramatic deep dive into the athlete’s tenuous experiences as a man seemingly trapped in a woman’s body (the English translation is by Edward Einhorn, who also directed the production). Thankfully, in the central role of Koubek, Hennessy Winkler conjured stoic steeliness, introspection, and an affecting world weariness, bringing much needed depth to the character. The solidly framed Winkler also made for a convincing athlete, as manifested by their highly physical performance. Even if the rest of the cast didn’t rise to the their level, there’s no denying the timeliness of the play’s subject matter and themes, especially within the context of our current administration. Obviously produced on a shoestring budget, Einhorn’s production smartly relied on projections to give the story a sense of time and place. Even smarter was the decision to stage the play in a semi-environmental manner, which brought a welcome sense of kineticism to an otherwise emotionally static play.

MY SON’S A QUEER (BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO?)
New York City Center
Closed

Then there was the utterly delightful My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?) (RECOMMENDED) starring Rob Madge (the British musical theater actor can also be currently seen playing the Emcee in the West End production of Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Cabaret). Originally slated to open on the Great White Way this past season, the solo show with songs instead made it to the Big Apple last weekend for a handful of performances at New York City Center. Essentially, the piece is a theatrical memoir recounting Madge’s childhood as a fabulous, theater-smitten boy, with a particular focus on his relationship with his nurturing parents and grandparents. Featuring vintage home video of Madge as a boy — particularly amusing is the footage of him putting on Disney-themed shows for his family (at an early age, he was already quite the talent and personality!) — and augmented by charming, crowd-pleasing songs (delivered with open-hearted honesty by Madge, who was accompanied by a terrific onstage four-piece band), the hourlong show is nothing less than a brisk, breezy time at the theater. It’s a refreshingly upbeat and empowering show about queerness and an affecting meditation on the delicacy and potential magic of childhood. It’s also a nice reminder of the impact that a few encouraging nudges can make. Suffice to say, My Son’s a Queer goes down very easily, especially when the show is helmed by someone as amiable, authentically generous, and well-adjusted as Madge (it’s apparent right off the bast that he’s utterly comfortable in his own skin). Suffice to say, the audience was smitten by Madge. I for one hope to see much more of him in the years to come on both sides of the pond.

PRINCE FAGGOT
Soho Rep / Playwrights Horizons
Through July 13

Best of all at Playwrights Horizon’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater was Jordan Tannahill’s smart and sensational new Off-Broadway play Prince Faggot (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which has been mounted in a co-production between Soho Rep and Playwrights Horizons. In short, the play is a seeming love child between Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play. Like the former, Tannahill’s work speculates the future of the British Royal Family, specifically one in which Prince George of Wales (fondly nicknamed “Tips”) — the oldest child of Prince William and Princess Catherine — turns out to be gay, and its implication on queer culture at large. And like Slave Play, the play aims to be and largely succeeds in being subversive and shocking, particularly as it relates to its frank and realistic depictions of gay sex, as well as its dissection of gay interracial sex and romantic relationships vis-à-vis Britain’s history of colonization. To tease these ideas out, the play has largely enlisted a cast of Black, brown, and trans actors to enact this imagined future (only John McCrea as Tips is White) and determine its relevance to them. Every once in a while, the actors break the fourth wall as themselves to expound on the proceedings vis-à-vis their own life experiences. As it turns out, the impact of such turn of events would seem to be small — for better or worse — for queers existing on the peripheries of Whiteness and their so-called privilege. Prince Faggot has been directed with keen theatrical imagination by Chayok Misha Chowdhury (a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for penning Public Obscenities), who has elicited some incisive, disarmingly honest acting from his very fine, diverse cast. As Tips, McCrea gives a performance that is as impetuous as it is fearless. Also quite layered are Mihir Kumar as Tips’s South Asian love interest, as well as legendary David Greenspan as both the Royal Family’s butler and public relations strategist.