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On a pitch-black stage hangs a naked man, blindfolded, bound and gagged, like a stag on a pole. Shining and pale, he resembles a painting of St Sebastian accepting martyrdom with rapture, or a marble statue of the Dying Gaul. Up to this point, Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill’s sometimes superb Prince Faggot, co-produced by Soho Rep and its temporary owner Playwrights Horizons, has led us confidently through an erotic fable about people who bear a strong resemblance to the British royal family. But here the action stops. The young man in the ropes is not simply a character in bondage; he is a heroic nude figure personifying tension and surrender. Kink is so ancient it has become a classic.
The play’s title serves as a useful filter, separating audiences familiar with how the insult was reclaimed from those that happily enjoy the full-frontal sex scenes staged with garish frankness by director Shayok Misha Chowdhury. (If you can shout at the box office, “I’ll have two tickets to Prince Bassoon, please,” you’re tall enough to be on this ride.) Chowdhury, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his play Public Indecency, is also a gifted director who positions his actors in David Zinn’s chandeliers-suspensioned sets, with an emphasis on carefully constructed, color-saturated stage images—as if the cameras might roll at any moment.
The story is set in a future that feels oddly familiar. In England in 2032, an adult Prince George (John McCrea) brings home his Oxford boyfriend, Dev Chatterjee (Mihir Kumar), to meet his parents, Prince William (K. Todd Freeman) and Princess Kate (Rachel Crowl), and his understanding sister, Charlotte (N’yomi Allure Stewart). His parents try to remain calm and supportive, but their guest stirs up ingrained prejudices. So the play, much of whose central scene is essentially “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” is supplemented by narration from the cast—“Dev is fit for dinner”—and sudden, vivid digressions into queer erotica. Each time the lovers escape the family's attention, lighting designer Isabella Bird casts deep shadows over their sometimes naked bodies, turning them into lustful, touching Caravaggio paintings.
The play begins on a lighter note, with Kumar showing us the inspiration for the piece: a 2017 photo of a four-year-old Prince George that sparked a heated online debate. Adorable pose, immaculate pink plaid shirt, perfectly coiffed hair – and “Gay icon!” the internet proclaimed, leading to complaints that social media was objectifying the child. The company of queer and trans actors, in a chatty mood at the introduction, show off photos of themselves as children, some of which reflect on how identity is formed long before sexual orientation. Tannahill then invites a discussion of whether his entire project is exploitative. “Yes, there is a real child named George, but obviously it’s not his story. Only he can write it,” says Kumar. “It’s our story.”
This particular royal love story is no fiction, however. Dev is too smart to see his relationship with the prince as progress: he wonders whether his Indian ancestors will be appalled by his proximity to white British power, worries about becoming a “brown subject,” and is repulsed by the way his lover’s family has abandoned him to the mercy of a hostile press. (“You know what your parents are thinking? Shit, we’ve got Meghan again,” Dev tells George.) The royal family’s imperious communications director, Jacqueline (the great David Greenspan, with an icy blond bob), promises to control the tabloids, but the death threats keep coming.
George loses the support of the increasingly anti-royalist Dev, and the young prince’s dalliance with drugs and sex takes a self-destructive turn. “When all you’ve ever known is a life of formality and power, you begin to crave its opposite. The complete annihilation of the ego. One ritual world after another,” explains one of the play’s many narrators. As George disowns himself at sex-chemo parties, the unstoppable tide of succession brings him closer and closer to investiture, to stasis, to the status quo. Only erotic surrender will not undermine or even disturb a monarchy that demands its own carefully constrained attire and public displays of intimacy.
Tannahill is one of Canada's leading writers: his other plays include
Sourse: newyorker.com
