Review: Silverback Mountain, a Mildly Funny Gay Romp in Uganda

As I’m sure you’ve noticed from the rainbow Playbills and surfeit of mesh strutting down 9^th Avenue, its Pride Month. What to get your queer friends you only like a little bit? Might I suggest tickets to Silverback Mountain, Mickey Gooch Jr.’s irreverent and regularly incoherent new comedy at AMT Theater.

It’s about Lucas (Gooch) and Andy (Joe Regelbrugge), a middle-aged couple in New York who decide over brunch to take a trip to Uganda to see the gorillas. This is despite their reservations about traveling to a country where “aggravated homosexuality” is punishable by death. (Are there any homosexuals in this city full of type-As who aren’t aggravated?) These professional class white gays are convinced they’re butch enough to pass as just buddies, and if things get really bad, there’s always American Express.

But their secret is exposed when they share an incautious kiss in the jungle. Lucas is taken back to jail, while Andy flees with the chief gorilla, Undatee, to Silverback Mountain, a place where the queers of Uganda can roam free. At least I think that’s how it goes down. It all happened so fast, with much shouting and romper-room activity. And it’s not like the plot matters much anyway.

Gooch uses his platform to touch on issues rarely discussed from the off-Broadway stage, like gooning and fart fetishism. It’s not so much groundbreaking as wind breaking. You’ll cringe-laugh at Gooch’s lusty deployment of vulgar turns-of-phrase like “Mr. Lazy-Prolapsed-Sad-Bottom” and “this pussy is the real Schmackary’s.” I have no idea what that means, but I still chuckled at the inanity. The salty language and shade is the point. It’s a lot like Messy White Gays, but less witty.

While the show bills itself as a musical comedy, there’s really only one full number titled “Why Are You Gay?” The big-voiced Olamide Asanpaola, easily filling out the role of buxom lesbian Tumaini, leads the cast in what feels like a lost song from The Book of Mormon, cut because it’s just one joke repeated.

While the wooden Gooch and one-note Regelbrugge leave much to be desired as our lead actors, the supporting players go the extra mile to ensure that the audience laughs. Adorned in a crop-top and face glitter, as if ever prepared for a flash circuit party, Walker Stovall exudes chaotic twink energy as Marty, best friend to this pair of daddies. When he casually asks the waitress, Miss Jackson (Star Amerasu), if she’s ever auditioned for RuPaul, Amerasu’s eye begins to twitch wildly. Leo Jasper Davis is goofy good fun as jungle guide Mamadu. And Samuel Selman, with his insanely toothy grin, is giving tertiary Spielberg villain as Mustafa, the warden of gay prison.

Jason Yanto, playing jailed LGBT activist Kai, delivers some of the funniest lines of the night during a scene that he tells us only exists so the actors can change costumes. “Make some noise for Michael Feinstein on piano,” he says over vamping accompaniment. “He wrote that whole book by himself!”

It’s a winking, embrace-the-messiness solution from director Sam LaFrage, who delivered DIY hilarity with Slam Frank, but whose bag of tricks seems to exhaust itself on a script that is only intermittently funny. Josh Oberlander’s set features dueling shimmer curtains and a wall of corrugated iron, halfheartedly blending Hell’s Kitchen with Africa. Sarah Lockwood’s costumes deliver African drag with a side of slut. Zack Lobel’s projections offer big block letters to tell you what is going on, in case you’ve drunkenly tuned out. Brandon Hilfer’s cartoonish sound design reaches for ridiculous hallucination, with the voice of Pastor Martin Ssempa saying “Eat Da Poo Poo” ringing though the theater.

It feels pointless to pan a show like Silverback Mountain, whose aspirations are so low. It never claims to have anything interesting to say about gay rights in Africa or the privilege of American tourists who assume the whole world is their Instagram set—and it doesn’t. It’s certainly too stupid to truly offend. But if you pass around a joint with your friends before the show, you’ll probably laugh. And maybe for this Pride, that’s enough.