Messy White Gays Off-Broadway Reviews

Although the pointless story erupts inside a Hell’s Kitchen apartment, the sweeping Central Park views from the picture windows of designer Alexander Dodge’s living room setting firmly situates the comedy some 50-odd floors atop Billionaire’s Row in midtown Manhattan. The geographical misplacement might be construed as a comment upon the accuracy of Droege’s satirical depiction of contemporary gay culture.

Droege has loaded his comedy with lots of one-liners, most of which detonate the theater with laughter. A few miss their mark, and that’s when the performances work overtime to massage those rare moments of awkward silence.

Droege could have penned a compelling autopsy report on contemporary gay male culture or a conduit for intermittently creative, pop culture-based barbs, and this play is the latter. It’s a massive disappointment, as Droege is a capable writer on a line-to-line level, with a decent vantage point about 30something gay people’s vices and virtue signaling. The blueprint for these men’s tiny, self-indulgent worldviews — where actresses, drug dealers, and tea dances dominate and people of color are a blip — is there. But Messy White Gays appears to have little interest in teasing out these privileges beyond shrill squabbling.

But deeper questioning and nuanced ambiguities aren’t really what Messy White Gays is about. Droege—famed for his impersonations of Chloë Sevigny—is a formidable joke writer, and in previous shows like Bright Colors and Bold Patterns and Happy Birthday Doug, his well-crafted volleys of insults, jokes, and gay-cultural observation were leavened with character evolution and observation. Messy White Gays is a different proposition—more a high-voltage, extended comedy sketch than fully realized play. The gags come…well…thick and fast. “There’s a problem.” “What? Is Lisa Rinna back in the cast of Chicago?” You may laugh, you may gasp (particularly at the literally blowout finale), and Messy White Gays may also make you want to stay in for the rest of your lives.