Punch Lines, Privilege, and the Limits of Satire in “Messy White Gays” – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Messy White Gays at The Duke on 42nd Street

By Ross

“Oh my god, did we kill him?” is the question first tossed out of Messy White Gays as it arrives at The Duke on 42nd Street. And the show is exactly as advertised: loud, silly, cutting, and unapologetically steeped in stereotype. Written by and starring Drew Droege, the one-act comedy delivers to our door sharp lines, absurd characters, and a gleeful willingness to poke at gay culture’s most familiar excesses. Whether you like it or not. Droege has long excelled at skewering these archetypes, and here he does so with surgical punch lines that often land hard and fast. The laughs come early and often, and for much of the evening, that’s enough to keep the room buzzing.

The play announces itself with one of the best opening lines you could ask for. It’s an instant hook, made even more absurd by the body sprawled face-down onstage, less corpse than discarded teddy bear, ragged, worn, and oddly unconvincing. The premise is immediately clear and deliciously ridiculous. Brecken and Caden, a self-absorbed gay couple in Hell’s Kitchen, appear to have murdered their throuple’s third, stuffed him into a Jonathan Adler credenza, and are now hosting brunch. Limes are missing. Friends are arriving. Panic ensues. Naturally. It’s farce built on narcissism and casual cruelty, and Droege understands exactly how to weaponize that.

Full bottle rosé is served, like juice boxes, as the performances lean fully into caricature. The sexy James Cusati-Moyer (Broadway’s Slave Play) plays Brecken with a sulky, brittle, only-fans precision that initially engages before tipping into careless snideness. Aaron Jackson’s Caden embodies performative righteousness, loudly championing equality, diversity, and inclusion until it interferes with comfort or privilege. As Addison, the very handsome and well built Derek Chadwick (Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood“) is impressively committed to being as hot and dumb as humanly possible, while Pete Zias’s Thacker cannot resist turning nearly every exchange into an invitation for anal sex. Droege himself happily appears as Karl, the uninvited neighbor who lingers far too long, sniffing around both the furniture and the situation with infuriating persistence. Together, they form a parade of exaggerated types who feel ripped from a particularly mean gay cartoon strip, and let loose in a penthouse high in the sky.

And yet, this is where Messy White Gays begins to falter. Droege’s previous plays, Happy Birthday Doug and Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, found ways to let the comedy expose something tender and human beneath the mess. Even when that core was hidden deep behind defensive walls of steel. Here, while the jokes are just as funny, they are less organically connected to the emotional moment or the interaction. Punch lines often feel parachuted in for impact rather than arising from a genuine moment or emotion. The laughter is constant, but over time it starts to feel costly, as if it’s fueled more by bitterness than insight, by the desire to score rather than to reveal.

Directed by Mike Donahue (MCC’s Which Way to the Stage), the production struggles to give the chaos a true sense of emotional flow. The jokes don’t always breathe, and the scenarios rarely feel grounded in anything resembling real human feeling. Instead, we’re left watching five men who are increasingly difficult to care about as they bicker, posture, and scramble to hide a body and not affect their social media stats. We’re invited to “feel bad for them,” as the press materials suggest, but it’s hard to muster much sympathy. What remains is a mirror held up to a version of gay culture defined by excess, insecurity, and relentless self-interest. And not in a caring, sharing kind of vulnerable way.

Still, if what you’re looking for is a fast, joke-dense afternoon or evening of theatre, Messy White Gays delivers exactly that. The design work by Alexander Dodge (scenic), James + AC (costumes), Jen Schriever (lighting), and Sinan Refik Zafar (sound) provides a slick, well-appointed playground for the antics, and the laughs are undeniably real. One character notes, “That’s not the reaction I was seeking,” a line that lingers longer than expected. It’s possible my reaction isn’t the one Droege was after either. But for audiences eager to sip rosé, laugh loudly, and recognize a few uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way, brunch with these messy white gays may be just the thing.