Playwright Howard Casner imagines the court of Queen Christina of Sweden (Julie Burrise) as a gay Never-Never Land, where historical figures from different epochs are all contemporaries, buddies, and rivals. In addition to Christina, born in 1626, we see Pope Julius II (Donaco Smyth), born 1443; right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn (co-director Thomas Colby), born 1927; Tchaikovsky (Gregory Blair), born 1842; and England's King Edward II (Mikhail Blokh), who died in 1327. There are references to Greta Garbo, Perez Hilton, and Oscar Wilde. The plot hinges on Christina's plans to abdicate, convert to Catholicism, and with her nun lover, Sister Gizelle (Konima Parkinson-Jones), come out as a proud lesbian. Reactionaries Pope Julius and Cohn are appalled at the prospect and launch a campaign to persuade Christina to stay in the closet.
Act 1 portrays Christina as a creature of the tabloids, and the modus operandi is camp comedy. If you find the spectacle of a pope in blue silk undies and a feathered see-through peignoir hilarious, you may love it. Act II is heavier going, as King Edward reveals himself as a garrulous gay activist ("Two, four, six, eight, don't dare assume your king is straight!") who spouts yards of dated 1992-era Act Up slogans and propaganda. With seven characters all determined to have the last word, the slanging matches go on interminably, and what might have been amusing as a one-hour comedy comes in as a two-and-a-half-hour editorial rant.
The directors (Chrisanne Blankenship-Billings and Colby) do all they can to make the evening palatable, and the actors give it their all, including Levy Baguin as Father Sebastian -- priest, autograph hound, and papal bum-boy. They're required to shift gears constantly from farce to tragedy, yet they somehow manage to make the harrowing last scene moving. Burrise is a beautiful but scatty Christina, Smyth makes the pope both camp and menacing, and Blair's Tchaikovsky, cast here as conservative villain, is vain and petulant. Colby's Cohn is a comic ninepin, set up to be knocked over, and Blokh's Edward would be a dashing rebel if he weren't required to preach endlessly.
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