I received a tip about Slash and decided to do a little research. I quickly learned that Vogue wrote a story about this play and its audience. Brilliantly, not only are boldface names showing up but also “a few adorably sulky teenage hipsters, a clutch of serious New York theater impresarios, and a number of confused millennials.” Bingo!
Off I go to the fifth floor Chinatown walkup MX Gallery for a piece described online as “scavenged from the fandoms of Star Trek, Sherlock, The Beatles and beyond, Slash guides the audience through an infernal fantasia of perverted intertextuality.” Essentially this piece is derived from the slash subgenre of fanfiction where characters are appropriated and written by fans for fans into other stories. Slash fiction, hugely popular in China, depicts male romantic pairings ranging from bromances to more highly sexualized relationships. This subgenre is primarily written and consumed by young women.
Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey are the creators and stars of this play. This is their first full length production and the room was full with about one hundred people the evening I attended. As “The Dark Haired One,” Ms. Hennessey begins the performance brushing her wig and repeating these lines as if into a mirror: “I am beautiful. I am sexy. I am fashionable. I am a brunette.” Eventually “The Blond” comes in and she’s in a funk. Riverdale High has gone on too long and both Betty and Veronica are tired of fighting over Archie. They decide to do some cosplay featuring homoerotic straight men, their favorite game.
A scene with Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk culminates into the following exchange: “Would it be insane if I kissed you? Yes… to anyone except you.” Other less well known couplings follow including Morrissey and Johnny Marr. One of the funniest reimaginations involves Sherlock Holmes, a young wizard who is a highly functional, drug addicted sociopath. In this show, skits also feature female pairings from Wonder Woman and Catwoman to a riff on a 1992 CNBC Talk Live conversation between Susan Sontag and Camille Paglia.
Musical interludes are also thrown into the blender including “Communist Do,” a song snippet performed by Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin to the tune of “Jellicle Cats” from the musical, Cats. An incestuous Ivanka Trump arrives with her porn star sister Tiffany and screams at the top of her lungs: “DAD KNOWS I’M NOW A BIG FUCKING JEW.” If slash fiction is generally all over the map, then this might be a faithful roasting of the genre.
Since fanfiction is about fans writing for fans, what happens when you don’t know who certain people are? In variety show style, the creators cover a wide assortment of, mostly, much older celebrities. I know who Brian Eno is but will everyone? I guess it really doesn’t matter because that section with David Bowie was boring even if familiar. Admittedly, I did laugh a few times and the conceit for Slash is promising if currently overstuffed.
This show has been selected for the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in January 2020. My suggestions: further sharpening the characterizations, rethinking or reworking the musical interludes and perhaps adding a hilarious speech or two about the subgenre from a fan or psychologist’s perspective. As of now, this show does not generate enough laughs to sustain ninety minutes of satire that a larger audience may or may not really know or care about.
I know Vogue said “it’s fast and campy, and as clever as anything the New York stage has seen in some time.” Don’t believe them. There was not nearly enough laughter coming from the often stone-faced, sitting very still audience. In a world with no men, this show asked about a kiss, “what does safe taste like?” More of that wit would be most welcome.