Review: What a World! What a World! and the Movies Playing on Loop in Our Queer Brains

What do the movies Grey Gardens, Mommie Dearest, and Showgirls have in common? These camp classics all occupy a central position in the gay cinematic canon. The reasons for their embrace by the queer masses are difficult to capture precisely, and doing so would sap some of their intangible magic. But it has something to do with quotable lines, outsize performance, and the way these stories offer us a glimpse at the porous borders of gender and class—how seemingly set categories are actually just theater.

Eric Marlin certainly blurs boundaries (sometimes counterproductively so) in their two-person play What a World! What a World!, now making its world premiere at the Tank. While the title references another indelible moment in queer cinema, the play actually revolves around the fictitious 1943 melodrama The Pearl of My Oyster, about socialite Charlotte Talversen, who falls in love with a working-class Maine fisherman named “Keith Butch.”

It opens with two actors on an empty stage rehearsing a drag performance inspired by the film. Not Charlotte (Annie Hoeg) is a drag queen playing our ingenue, and Not Keith (Queen-Tiye Akamefula) is a drag king playing the dude. They perform stiff choreography vaguely reminiscent of Meyerholdian biomechanics, which does nothing to enhance the lines from the screenplay they recite, problematic howlers like, “I’m the kinda of dame whose gonna love you / I’m gonna love you till it hurts / I’m gonna love you even if you smack me.”

Not Keith wonders aloud if they should excise this casual endorsement of domestic violence, while Not Charlotte insists it is an iconic line that will be sorely missed. “I want to be rigorous about this,” says NK. “I’m rigorous; I’m rigorous as fuck,” retorts NC. “Rigor without morality is mere calisthenics,” shoots back NK, later asking, “What’s the point of drag if it doesn’t disrupt?”  They bludgeon each other with their liberal arts educations like this for several more scenes.

When they occasionally manage to transcend the turgid prose of academia, Marlin creates moments of bracing insight and emotional vulnerability. “I wanna be effortless and composed and gritty and authentic and vicious and terrifying and nuanced and cosmopolitan and salty and wondrous and glittering and multifaceted and sensual and seductive and seducing and wild and free,” monologues NC. “I just wanna be MY AUTHENTIC SELF!” It’s the desperate cry of every (queer) person lost in their own fabulous invention, as if such a thing as “the self” exists without contrivance. I’m not acting…I’m not acting!

Later scenes depict the pair watching the film, which director Ilana Khanin and designer Skye Mahaffie cleverly stage using a boom box and a single stage light. Khanin’s resourcefulness is further exhibited when the two actors step into the film, standing in front of a printed backdrop of a stormy harbor. Wisely, Khanin saves Megan Rutherford Murray’s spectacular costumes, fantastic visions dripping in barnacle baubles, for the finale.

Khanin does a lot with very little in her DIY production, though it is obvious that she and dramaturg Luke Daniel White could have used a stronger hand in shaping a play that still hasn’t reached its full potential. It’s not always clear who is playing whom, or why after attacking the film’s misogyny NK seems to suddenly transform into a superfan. Akamefula and Hoeg deliver consistently committed performances despite the narrative whiplash, but they cannot dispel the suspicion that we’ve missed a few steps.

It was only after I cracked open the script that I discovered there are actually four sets of characters in this play—that the people watching the film (and apparently a recording of the drag parody) are distinct figures that nevertheless bleed into one another. “Don’t worry about keeping it all straight,” a note in the script reassures, “Nothing about this should be straight.” It’s a cute turn of phrase, but playwrights should beware of using queerness as a catch-all excuse for messiness. The audience won’t always care enough to forgive you.

But with What a World! What a World!, Marlin does convey one crucial theme, which is the power these films have to draw outsiders together, acting as connective tissue for queer communities for over a century as we sit spellbound in the reflected light of the silver screen. “I need the flicker,” NC declares, “and I need you to see the flicker / because if you can’t see the flicker / then maybe it isn’t real.” Oh, it’s real—but like Tinker Bell, not everyone can see.