The Toronto Theatre Review: Redheaded Stepchild Productions/SummerWorks’ Gaylord
By Ross
“Feels kinda queer,” doesn’t it? Most magnificently, as we sit in The Citadel performance space as part of the SummerWorks Performance Festival, waiting for those eight chairs, set in a broad semi-circle, to be filled. The smoke sneakily starts to fill the air, with anticipation and excitement at just the right level for Redheaded Stepchild Productions‘ strongly stanced reading of the new play, Gaylord. Written with awesome honor by the engaging Johnnie McNamara Walker (The Heterosexuals), who vulnerably portrays both himself and the captivating artist and provocateur, Will Munro, the triple-threat queer artist, who is both shameless and artfully possessed, an iconic Toronto character whom I had never heard of until this engagingly clever revealing.
The central focus of Walker’s obsessional homage, William Grant Munro, wasn’t just a Toronto artist—he was the vibrant heartbeat of the city’s underground art and party scene. A community builder, a club promoter, and a restaurateur, he spun magic out of everything, from fashioning provocative art out of underwear to fueling the legendary Toronto queer scene with his iconic “Vazaleen” nights, not to mention his unique way of telling time and connecting with cute boys on the front porch of his home.
Blowing my mind with the star-power queerness of this unknown (to me) visual and performance artist, Munro may have crafted his epic queerness after my Toronto theatre days at York University—and tragically died of a spinal cord infection caused by brain cancer, long before my return in 2020. Munro’s “Vazaleen” parties and his Lee Palace playlists are unpacked with artful precision by this cast of well-curated artists determined to unleash the cosmic leather daddy edge required for Gaylord to be as alive as it is for this reading. Especially Keith Cole, the last of eight to take their seat, whose entrance fills the space with a wonderful wildness worthy of Munro and Walker’s play-in-the-making.
The game crew: Brandon Ash-Mohammed (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) as The Rival Student & The Shy Bear, Joshua Browne (Coal Mine’s The Antipodes) as Dave, Aldrin Bundoc (Canadian Stage’s The Inheritance) as That Cute Boy, Keith Cole (timeshare’s Box 4901) as The Art Teacher & Mom, Graham Conway (Soulpepper/Bad Hats’ Peter Pan), as Stage Directions, Margo MacDonald (Citadel’s The Penelopiad) as Michael Coren, Sebastian Marziali (Soulpepper’s A Streetcar Named Desire) as Sk8r Boi, and writer Johnnie McNamara Walker, give it their unvarnished all, ripping away, in delight, the protective layer, and showcasing a satirical headlock that also speaks to us, like those tightie whities lying centerstage after being thrown there in disgust.
Utilizing a strong dramaturgical assist by Jesse Stong (Festival Director of Centaur Theatre’s Queer Reading Series), Gaylord is on its way to becoming something spectacularly exciting, engaging, and enlightening. It holds us in its white briefs, metaphors of utter epic magnificence and honest vulnerability, digging into framings around what it means to be gay and an artist. It’s thrown forward with strength in cleverly constructed emotional monologues, fiercely performed by these actor-readers. The Big Brother Browne speech, the Coren-MacDonald critique, and the Cole tirade delivered by The Art Teacher are solid, emotionally pure, and engagingly clever in their comedy and honesty. Paradise is in the eye of the beholder, we are reminded, with an added query, “Is this what you want?” and the only response one could have is, “Most definitely.” The more packed those briefs are, the better, and I’m talking about the play, you “so fragile“, dirty-minded thing. Behave—well, not really.
