We can’t say there isn’t truth in advertising: Drew Droege’s “Messy White Gays” is about just that. Then again, so were his previous Off Broadway shows, “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns” (2016) and “Happy Birthday Doug” (2020). As a playwright and performer, Droege skewers the entitlement, narcissism and pettiness of this particular demographic, or at least a well-off, blasé, materialistic segment of it. He does not let himself off the hook, either.
Droege’s new comedy, which just opened at the Duke on 42nd Street, is a variation on the Hitchcock movie “Rope” (1948), in which a couple of men murder a third and hide his body from their dinner companions in a wooden chest. Here Brecken (James Cusati-Moyer, a Tony Award nominee for “Slave Play”) and Caden (Aaron Jackson, the co-creator and co-star of “Dicks: The Musical”) have just killed the third member of their throuple, Monty. They stuff the corpse in a credenza just as their friends start turning up for a brunch they forgot they were hosting.
Droege writes with a sharp satirical eye and an acerbic gusto, and routinely delivers an uncommonly high ratio of jokes to lines. His plays also move at a steady clip, though Mike Donahue’s production here is more like a freight train. Maybe that’s because Brecken, Caden and their guests inhale large quantities of coke that was home-delivered to the hosts’ Manhattan luxury high-rise and drink rosé straight from the bottle with curly straws. More is more is more.
Unlike the earlier two shows, which were solos, “Messy White Gays” has a cast of five, including Droege himself as the cranky neighbor Karl, a member of an older queer generation who relentlessly mocks the men’s shallowness. After Karl says, somewhat self-righteously, that “Sundays used to be for parades and memorials,” one of the brunch guests, Thacker (Pete Zias), implores him: “Please tell us more about the past. It sounds about as sad as you look.”
“You are going to grow into a very strange-looking adult,” Karl shoots back. When cornered, go for someone’s appearance. In that, Karl shares more than he’d probably care to admit with the others, along with strong opinions about absolutely everything.
A lack of them is actually what got Caden and Brecken’s boyfriend killed. Monty’s final offense was to say he liked Jean Smart, a benign take that contributed to his being assessed as “medium” by Brecken. And now his corpse’s smell is starting to be a real downer on the festivities.
These men are comfortable only in their narrow social and racial milieu, and quick to blame others for what ails them. Zias plays Thacker as an imp, both jolly and malicious, who thinks he’s not landing acting jobs on Broadway because he’s white — “It’s straight up racism,” he says, “and I’m not about that ever ever ever!”
Yet when Brecken asks whether any of them has a single real Black friend, they all come up empty-handed, feebly naming a few hookups, one follower of Brecken’s OnlyFans and an 85-year-old neighbor.
The only relief from the outpouring of catty zingers is the sweet galoot Addison (Derek Chadwick), a hunk bursting out of his tank top; if he were a woman, he’d be typed as a “dumb blonde.” Addison is so nice that even Karl is powerless against him — his barbs slide right off.
That Addison is presented as not all that smart is part of the play’s sardonically nihilistic view of these men, who pass off hostility as joking. By the end, Droege has painted himself into a narrative corner: “Messy White Gays” has nowhere to go because the characters are not interested in anything but themselves.
Messy White Gays
Through Jan. 11 at the Duke on 42nd Street, Manhattan; messywhitegays.com. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes.
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