‘Everything, Devoured’ Delivers Camp, Chaos, and a Drag Reagan
Nu Sass Productions' "Everything, Devoured" raises Reagan from the dead in a saucy, surreal ghost story about saving queer lives.
Of all the kooky shenanigans a crew of queer friends could get into on a pizza night, conducting a blood ritual to summon a demon isn’t the craziest thing we’ve heard.
And should that demon turn out to be Ronald Reagan incarnated as a fierce and fearsome drag queen — as in Katherine Gwynn’s new play Everything, Devoured, presented by Nu Sass Productions — that just makes a certain kind of sense.
Natural and supernatural are blended nicely by directors Tracey Erbacher and Ileana Blustein, staging the world-premiere production in the intimate environs of the Sitar Arts Center. Even as the story spins out into comic-horror fantasia, a down-to-earth sensibility prevails inside the modest urban apartment shared by queer partners Kore (June Dickson-Burke) and Julian (Tristin Evans).
They’re like any twentysomething couple, arriving home from a hard day out in the world, dusting off the stress with wine and weed. Their jobs take a toll, as does simply existing as queer people in hostile times.
For Kore, a self-described “Midwestern trans lesbian” incensed by the recent law disenfranchising trans people in her home state of Kansas, the time has come for more radical action than the Resistance has so far mustered. Soon, the couple is joined by their friend Dante (Selena Renee Gill), a frustrated community organizer, also trans, who adds their righteous anger to the brew, and Kore leads them all into action — a summoning.
While remaining dead serious about the absolute urgency to protect trans lives in this country, Gwynn’s drama takes off into entertaining camp once the crew makes contact with the netherworld.
“Category is: Ronald Reagan realness.” Although, the real Ronald Reagan was never as fabulous as the creature who emerges from the beyond, a demon drag queen in costume designer Henery Wyand’s spiked, bedazzled skirt-suit played with sharp-edged cool by O’Malley Steuerman.
Entering to “Vogue” — a too-obvious song choice, and not Reagan’s era — the demon dominates almost through the sheer insistence of Steuerman’s assured performance. As Kore, Dickson-Burke conveys a similar assurance in her fired-up character, if not consistently in her delivery of the text.
Portraying a mysterious second visitor from the beyond, Christian David Harris doesn’t show a persuasive hold on either. However, the identity of his ghost reveals a poignant connection to Reagan’s legacy of hostility towards the queer community through his administration’s willful inaction during the AIDS crisis.
That connection adds a powerful layer of context to the play’s foremost mystery: what is Kore’s real purpose in summoning this demon? If she believes we can only save ourselves, what’s dead Reagan gonna do? Has Kore simply decided to fight fire with hellfire? Ultimately, her intentions are revealed, but then playwright Gwynn seems to have nowhere left to take us.
The stakes of resisting or surrendering, having been well-established via dramatic depiction and an over-the-top, dragged-up showdown with a demon, are again flatly spelled out. Then, another too-obvious song choice dances us out the door and back into the void, where the Resistance struggles mightily as rights are peeled away from LGBTQ people one law at a time. Maybe we all need to be raising more hell.
Everything, Devoured (★★★☆☆) runs through May 10 at the Sitar Arts Center, 1724 Kalorama Rd. NW (theater entrance three doors down). Tickets are $25 general admission, or $50 for a Date Night package (2 tickets + 2 drinks + 2 snacks). Discount options available for students, educators, essential workers, and industry. Visit nusass.com.
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