“The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions” at Park Avenue Armory (Photo: Stephanie Berger)

I was unprepared for what I saw last night at Park Avenue Armory, not because of any mind-blowing, world-shaking theatrical experience, but because that’s what I was expecting and it’s not what happened. 

In the 2019 Prototype Festival, I mostly enjoyed composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman’s adaptation of one of my favorite plays, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. I was intrigued when the Armory announced the duo would be working on, presumably, a much larger scale with a commissioned adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s iconic 1977 book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions. 

The Armory’s website writes that Venables and Huffman “conjure up a world that takes the original text on a kaleidoscopic journey that ignores boundaries just like the characters on stage do, drawing on theater, dance, and song from the Baroque to Broadway and beyond.” Sounds great, sign me up. And even though I was aware that Venables is an opera composer, somehow from the Armory’s description of the music, that’s not what I was expecting. Turns out the phrase “drawing on” is doing a lot of work.

Sure the influences are there, but they are buried within the texture of Venables’ more standard “new classical” composition. Mitchell’s book is written as a series of fables about a group of people known as the Faggots who are not Men and not Women, who exist outside, but adjacent to their worlds. It’s a children’s tale for adults – specifically queer adults. Asta’s illustrations are inky swirls of interconnected faces and bodies. The book has a “gather round” feeling, like a tale being told over a fire in Provincetown. Venables’ composition is alienating, saying not so much look at how wonderfully the Faggots express themselves like in Mitchell’s book, but listen to this music only the Faggots can make, isn’t it strange?

There’s a raw, beasts-in-the-wild carnality in Mitchell’s book, but Venables’ composition is staid and (here come those Baroque references) it feels like a musical salon in a drawing room. In Huffman’s staging, the extraordinarily talented singer-musician ensemble is often sitting in straight-backed chairs half-circled around a piano or harpsichord. When Huffman does set them in motion, it’s no more exciting than an acting school warmup: they run back to front, they run side to side, they walk in a circle and step forward to say their lines. Revolutionary?

The most it ever comes alive is when a boom box is brought out and a beat drops and a strobe light comes on. But even then, there’s no use of the space. There’s no use of the fifteen-person ensemble other than freeform dancing. You know what Faggots like? Choreography! There are several moments where Venables’ music is begging for it, but the full ensemble never does any synchronized steps, despite a credited choreographer.

The production feels empty in the Armory’s space. Their website describes it as a “cabaret-like spectacle,” but there’s no flash, there’s no sparkle. The astounding Kit Green serves as an emcee of sorts and tries to rustle a bit of energy out of the audience by cracking jokes and serving, but Green is only one person in a vast black hole.

Theo Clinkard’s costumes have the feel of a thrift shop grab bag: everybody take some items and put on whatever makes you feel good. It works at times, at others it feels like when a mother lets her toddler choose what to wear for school. Bertrand Couderc’s lighting is mostly in the white-to-amber range and captures the sensation of Venables’ music if not the esprit de corps of Mitchell’s book.

The artwork on the Armory’s website is even misleading – the costumes, the makeup, the set, the props in this photo have nothing to do with what actually happens in the drab, dull production that actually takes the stage. It’s a shame, really. Everyone in it is so gifted and the Armory has limitless capabilities to bring Mitchell’s book to life. Instead, it feels like a funeral – maybe Venables and Huffman are saying the Faggots are dead. Let me check my pulse.