Dope Queens
Reviewed by Taylor Kass
TomorrowLand Productions and Pop Up Theater
Through September 22
RECOMMENDED
Two’s company. Three’s a love triangle. After being released from protective custody during a stint in jail, Goldie (Donzell Lewis) and her boyfriend Blake (Michael Antosy) have just moved into a not-so-new place in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Goldie scrubs every inch of the dingy apartment; drug addict Blake can’t seem to stay clean. When fellow sex worker and friend from jail Angel (Malaya) needs a place to crash, Goldie jumps at the chance to create a family of sorts. But Angel’s arrival threatens Goldie’s relationship and livelihood, turning a foggy night in San Francisco into a life-threatening brush with danger.
Goldie is an optimist, played with starry-eyed peppiness and bright comedy by Lewis (in addition to acting, he also performs as a drag queen). Goldie doesn’t just walk — she floats, she dances, she seems to be wearing heels even when she’s barefoot. In contrast to Goldie’s bubbliness, Angel (Malaya) is cool, sexy, and composed. Even though she’s been released from jail at 4 a.m. and taken a train all the way up the Bay, she looks absolutely flawless as she emulates queen Naomi Campbell’s walk. But underneath her fierce and unflappable exterior is a dream deferred and a deep hunger to love and be loved in return.
And that’s where the love triangle comes in. Blake (Antosy) is torn between his affection for Goldie — the woman who has cared for him and loved him through a series of fuck-ups — and his attraction to Angel, the woman who challenges him to want more. Antosy has an addict’s twitchiness and a hustler’s cockiness, but he’s also as sensitive as an exposed nerve.
Playwright/director Grafton Doyle builds the world of the play through masterful, vivid storytelling, as the action heats slowly to a heart-pounding final scene. As a child, Goldie and her siblings pushed shoppers’ carts to make a few nickels for food. Blake’s arrest left him with a broken jaw. The night she left home, Angel watched her sister prepare for prom. Story by story, Dope Queens chips away at clichés. Rather than painting them as props in a political discourse, Doyle rightly provides Goldie, Blake and Angel with complicated pasts, desires and dreams. And he allows them to tell their own stories.
Dope Queens is packed with a multitude of complicated topics in a web of intersecting identities — the experiences of trans women of color like Goldie and Angel; the safety net of privilege for a well-off cis white man like Blake; the nuances of sex work for all three characters; the different ways that the prison system has abused each one of them. But Dope Queens isn’t a play about issues. It’s a play about people, whose stories need to be told onstage. Character is queen here, and these three memorable characters played by three magnetic actors earn Dope Queens its crown.
The Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Sept. 22. www.dopequeensplay.com. Running time: approximately two hours with a 15-minute intermission.
