Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Slightly dwarved at the Armory, the freewheeling stage adaptation of THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS casts its sensuous spell

• By drediman
• December 12, 2025
• No Comments

The Park Avenue Armory’s massive drill hall is a space that begs to be utilized to its extravagant physical potential. With such an expanse, the possibilities are almost limitless — which is why Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s stage scrappy adaptation of The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions comes across as a bit of a strange choice and a missed opportunity for the high profile performing arts institution. Mind you, there are many pleasures to be had in this theatrical retelling of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta‘s 1977 fantasia of queer fables, which put the titular “faggots and their friends” at the center of a fantastically reimagined history of cyclical struggle and revolution.

Chief among these delights is Venables’ eclectic yet deeply felt score — the composer draws inspiration across opera (particularly of the Baroque variety), alternative pop music, and Broadway — which is performed by a company of multi-talented performers, many of them classically trained singers and musicians who are committed to their craft. Throw into the mix some sensuous and defiantly political poetry and spoken word, as well as some marvelous dance breaks and you get a freewheelingly patchwork, multidisciplinary staging — credited to Huffman — that champions ensemble-based storytelling. Narrated directly to the audience by a fabulously self-possessed trans woman of a certain age, the commune of a production takes on a winsome “let’s put on a show” vibe, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to draw us further into the collective storytelling (one notable instance involves an all-but-forced sing-along).

Despite these sensory thrills, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the piece would have been much more impactful in an intimate “underground” kind of space, which would gel with the production’s madcap, decidedly downtown and cabaret aesthetic much more naturally. As it is, the production seems somewhat unmoored in the epically scaled space. And although I applaud the general idea of unapologetically putting the historically marginalized queer narrative front and center — in mythological vernacular or not — it doesn’t have to come at the expense of putting other communities down. At the end of the day, constant revolution and survival shouldn’t be the endgame — sustainable co-existence should.

RECOMMENDED

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS
Off-Broadway, Play / Opera / Dance
Park Avenue Armory
1 hours, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 14