Brooklyn Rep, The Divine’s award-winning resident (in the basement) theatre company, presents These Gays! They’re Trying To… – a celebration of queer tv meme culture which offers the rollicking colonic so often needed after Christmas.
Can Lindsay Lohan survive The White Lotus Reykjavik?
The brief was simple. These Gays! They’re Trying To… sees four all-star, US and UK-based Brooklyn Rep writers – Nathaniel Foster, David Levesley, reid tang and Colin Waitt – imagine the inevitable Lindsey Lohan-led, Iceland-based fifth season of HBO’s The White Lotus. Also starring Björk, of course. From shamanic rituals to soundbaths, to Eurovision star-led cults, the wealthy worried descend on Reykjavik’s finest spa to fix their bodies and their lives.
Created by David Levesley and Brooklyn Rep director and creative producer Charles Quittner, These Gays!… is the brand new production from the Dalston gay bar theatre company that made waves at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the award-winning All the Fraudulent Horse Girls.
The theatrical extravaganza is brought to life by an iconic cast of performers with talents ranging from sawism and thereminism to world leading udder-wearing drag. Inspired by Brooklyn Rep’s exciting, elevated work in progress festival Scritches, These Gays!… will see US and UK-based writers paired with stars of London’s Queer performance scene to bring to life this entirely original, hilarious and soon-to-be cult imagining.
From the ‘Best Ensemble Performance’ winning cast at the Edinburgh Fringe, Alice Morgan Richards AKA half-cow half-milkman drag monstrosity Dairy King leads a multi-talented cast of queer, London-based performers. Also populating the rich Reykjavik resort are Shakeel Kimotho (La Cage aux Folles – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Cats – UK & International Tour) fast rising drag star Marcus Zebra AKA Zeborah, Dan de la Motte (Too Much Pills & Liquor – Brooklyn Rep at The Divine), and thereminist, sawist and composer Jo Fraser.
These Gays! They’re Trying To… will undoubtedly be the best and only White Lotus themed play in the basement of a gay bar during the period between Christmas and New Year, then again after New Year.
Charles Quittner, Brooklyn Rep UK Creative Director and These Gays!… Creator/Director said: “Sometimes it seems that the only way for emerging fringey theatre companies to make a mark in London is to strike an instant chord with the zeitgeist. Enter Brooklyn Rep’s post-panto play, catching a trend months before its reawakening, sicking our gorgeous stable of past writers and performers on that appointment TV, gay HBO hotel anthology of the rich and the shameless. An All-Stars spin off of our Scritches new play festival, our four writers lampoon wellness and entertainment trends while also holding space for genuine tension… I genuinely have no idea how this will all turn out but I can’t wait to find out with the rest of you.”
These Gays! They’re Trying To… is performing in the basement of The Divine in Dalston from Friday 27 – Monday 30 December and Thursday 2 – Saturday 4 January.
