Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus @ Kitchen Dog Theater
—Martha Heimberg
There’s gore galore and a fool’s crazy-ass epiphany in acclaimed playwright Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, the pitch-black comedy that continues Kitchen Dog Theater’s 31st season with a mound of gassy corpses, a slew of slapstick gags, and a brilliant cast and crew salvaging a sliver of hope from the brutal aftermath of war.
Kitchen Dog’s very name is drawn from Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot, in which the kitchen dog is a symbol of the everyman/victim of a society doomed to repeat the conqueror-takes-all scenario. The theater’s stated mission is “to question that seemingly endless cycle of ignorance and injustice.” Mac’s acknowledged debt to Beckett is here visible in the sheer undertaking. “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now,” said Beckett. In Gary, which premiered on Broadway in 2019, Mac certainly jumps deep into the mess—with a queer clown and a super-tough maid—in a brave attempt to shape a comedy from the chaos.
As the subtitle indicates, the play picks up where Shakespeare’s tragedy leaves off. The red velvet curtain opens and we’re in the bloody banquet room of the murderous Roman general. Two horrible, hilarious heaps of male corpses, penises flopped or propped, fill the stage in an OMG set design by Justin Lochlear (props by Cindy Ernst Godinez), and grandiose, gag-inducing gore F/X designed by Cameron Cobb.
So, somebody’s gotta clean up this disgusting mess for the coronation coming up. Enter Gary (a bouncy, smiling, totally engaging Randy Pearlman), a street clown promoted to maid for the job nobody wants. He’s quite full of himself, surveying the bloody carnage and checking out the butts and occasional erect penises of various cadavers. Pearlman’s sly grin and lightness of foot, as he moves through the bloody carnage towering over and around him, is funny and awful. Gary’s is not the heavy humor of the gravedigger. This clown, who can shed a tear if his feelings are hurt, has ambitions to be a court fool, and ideas about creating a comedy revenge play to end all revenge.
Then, in walks Janice—a riveting Karen Parrish, exasperated, comically seductive, and ultimately eloquent—the experienced maid who knows all the moves and tubes for pumping farts/fluids out of every last corpse. She’s unimpressed by Gary’s new-guy-on-the-job enthusiasm, and almost takes the last thing we ate right out of us as she demonstrates how to get that corpse fluid moving into the bucket, by sucking the tube with her mouth. Gary (jaw dropped and hands at his throat) comments, “You ever think if this is the kind of thing you gotta do regular, you might not be living your best life.” We choke on that laughter.
When Gary starts his fanciful talk about saving the world by making people laugh about the insanity of it all, Janice calls him “a rhyming fool.” She just wants to get on with the body removal.
But then in comes Carole (a frantic, wide-eyed Brandy McClendon Kae), a blood-smeared midwife insisting she did all she could to save the poor baby from murder, pushing her way through the bodies and demanding she be heard. (The midwife’s three-story Roman wig courtesy of costume designer Amy Poe). The three survivors decide to give comedy and hope a shot, and all spectacle breaks loose. As Gary would say, this you gotta see.
Director Tim Johnson brings out the best in his first-rate cast, keeping their humanity viable beyond the real gross-out nastiness of the death that piles up after war. His pacing gives us room to laugh, and to think about the obvious comparison—not only to the warring factions in our own country, but to Putin’s catastrophic attack on a nation whose heroic leader was a comedian before he was elected president. Does art imitate life, or vice versa?
Parrish, a 20-year KDT company member, has won critical praise for many roles, but here she’s better than ever. Her performance as Janice raises this cynical, comical maid in a wildly fantastical farce to a fully human, eloquent level. She is so completely the woman who knows in her aching body and worn-down soul that after every war cleaning up the squalor will fall to somebody—and that somebody is going to be the grubby maid.
Yet when Gary hangs a gold chain off a corpse around her neck, she is giddy with sudden possibility; she lights up alluringly, and delivers true comic relief. (Exhale, laughing.) Then, contemplating the tortured death of the murdered Lavinia, she picks up green branches and holds them across her own body, surely and quietly evoking the grief we feel at the death of innocent people standing in the way of vengeful power. (Inhale, close eyes.) This heroic maid makes us care about the outcome of the proposed coup and revolution.
Gary: A Sequel evokes vaudeville, but also provides some serious food for thought—and I’m not talking about that “finger of pie” served up to the choking midwife in a cannibal joke.
I hope Taylor Mac sees this production. And I hope anybody looking for a play that aims to give shape to the chaos of the daily news will see it, too.
WHEN: Through April 3
WHERE: Kitchen Dog Theater, Dallas
WEB: kitchendogtheater.org (box office: 214-953-1055)
