Addison (Derek Chadwick, left) listens to his friends’ downstairs neighbor Karl (Drew Droege) in Droege’s play Messy White Gays.
Although it’s probably not among the top 10 elements for a successful farce, the awkward presence of a corpse has proved comic gold in such plays as Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace and Joe Orton’s Loot. The first few moments of Messy White Gays suggest that playwright Drew Droege may have tapped into the vein as well. In darkness, a crash of breaking glass is heard, and the lights come up suddenly on two young men standing over a body. The corpse is Monty, the third in their throuple. But what ensues is more a nightmare of bad behavior than a comic soufflé.
The vertical characters are Caden (Aaron Jackson) and Brecken (James Cusati-Moyer), a sociopath with a large social-media following.
Caden (Aaron Jackson, right) proposes to his boyfriend Brecken (James Cusati-Moyer).
Brecken: This is so fucking hot. … It feels great. I feel great. We finally did something we said we were gonna do! …
Caden: All he said was that he liked Jean Smart.
Brecken: That’s enough for me!
Caden: But you love Jean Smart!
Brecken: And he didn’t say he loved Jean Smart. He said he liked her. He couldn’t even be bold enough to say he loved her. … He was just so fucking medium about everything! And this is New York, bitch. Nobody survives on medium.
The play quickly dials up the hysteria as it becomes a relentlessly madcap version of Rope, in which two amoral gay men kill someone and hide the body from visitors. The hungover roommates suddenly panic because Caden has invited friends for brunch, and they have to hide Monty’s body. In short order, their gaudily dressed chum Thacker (Pete Zias), a failed chorus boy, arrives. Thacker wants his hosts to let him know when their 85-year-old Black neighbor dies so he can get first dibs on the apartment, in Central Park Tower. (Droege’s script misidentifies the tower, on 57th Street, as being in Hell’s Kitchen, but in any case scenic designer Alexander Dodge’s backdrop includes a huge window with an enviable view.) Thacker soon joins the cover-up.
Karl lights into Caden and Brecken’s cokehead friend Thacker (Pete Zias, right).
Arriving next is Addison (Derek Chadwick), a traditional dumb jock. When he knocks and asks to come in, Caden, Brecken, and Thacker are hiding Monty’s body. To get Addison to leave, they emit loud groans and claim to be having sex. Sweet but as amoral as the rest, Addison responds: “Okay, that’s cool. … So can I still come in?”
The last to arrive—uninvited—is the killers’ downstairs neighbor Karl, played by author Droege himself. Karl is a stereotypical, bitchy queen, overbearing and acidulous (he describes Thacker as “the love child of a piglet and a Skittle”). Gathered together, the group discovers that Monty made a social-media post that has riled his audience:
Addison: I gotta say, this is so bad for Monty. Once somebody gets dragged by White Does Not Mean Right, it’s over for them.
Brecken: How angry do you have to be to start a group called White Does Not Mean Right? …
Caden: It’s actually an incredible organization of white and white-identifying allies of people of color. We believe in the power of change.
Brecken: We?
Karl: And this is all white people in your group?
Caden: We have invites out to multiple persons of color.
Thacker: You and me both, gurl!
Caden: We as white people must learn to stop exploiting brown images for the sake of a joke. This is digital blackface.
From left: Addison, Caden and Thacker (Pete Zias) have a rare quiet moment, sipping rosé wine through curly straws. Photographs by Marc J. Franklin.
The satire of a generation of gays, fueled by drugs and booze and obsessed with sexual hookups, social media, and white guilt, may be warranted, but the references to raunchy websites and the toxic self-absorption can be off-putting. To leaven the proceedings, Droege name-drops Manhattan bars and restaurants—Monster, Yum Yum Too, Arriba! Arriba!—that ensure laughs from the New York audience but give the play a parochial air. Yet, at his best, Droege can deliver a comic quip that’s timeless. When Caden tells Karl that it “must be really hard for you” to watch his husband go to work every day, Karl asks: “Why would that be?”
Caden: Because he’s a cop.
Karl: Well, I’m a publicist, so my job is equally terrifying.
Director Mike Donohue has generally cast the play well. Cusati-Moyer, Jackson, and Zias are effectively repellent (although Zias resembles a chorus boy about as much as a tractor does a penguin, and his delivery is often slurry). Chadwick, as the only likable character, fares best. But the joyous exuberance of Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, Droege’s hilarious 2017 solo show, is sorely missed here.
Drew Droege’s Messy White Gays plays through Jan. 11 at the Duke (229 West 42nd St.). Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Monday, and Wednesday through Friday; at 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday; and at 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit messywhitegays.com.
Playwright: Drew Droege
Director: Mike Donahue
Scenic Design: Alexander Dodge
Costume Design: James + AC
Lighting Design: Jen Schriever
Sound Design: Sinan Refik Zafar
