nytheatre.com review
by Martin Denton · July 19, 2003

Bald Diva! is billed as an Ionesco parody, but I think pastiche is a more accurate description. Playwright David Koteles delivers here a faithful, funny imitation of the absurdist master to jab satirically at contemporary gay clone culture: Ionesco is the means, not the end; Chelsea boys, like the two sets of clueless, sexless, lifeless life partners who are Bald Diva!'s main characters, are the butt of this joke.

Tim Jackson-Smith and Jim Jackson-Smith are the first pair we meet, utterly un- and disengaged at nine in the evening at their fashionable apartment, dinner having been eaten, the dogs (Liza and Judy) having been walked, and nothing but reruns on the tube. Eventually their houseboy, Mary, reminds them that Craig Tyler-Martin and Greg Tyler-Martin are coming over for dinner. Craig and Greg arrive, but no one eats, instead, shallow pretense is raised to a high art. Eventually, the hunky Fire Chief drops by to teach the foursome a lesson that they are entirely unequipped to understand. Like the famous protagonists created by that other great absurdist writer Beckett, Craig and Greg (who are interchangeable with Tim and Jim but for their better-defined musculatures) are back where they started when the play ends. They can't go on; they will go on.

Koteles clearly has lots of talent, nailing both the Ionesco m.o. and the post-Will & Grace milieu. Bald Diva! is very funny in places and wickedly clever in others; if the cluelessness of its protagonists starts to grate after a while, that's more an indication of the thinness of the parody's objects than any lack of skill on the part of the parodist. Put another way: I'd love to see Koteles apply himself to a subject more rigorous than the alleged vapidity of fashion-conscious gay men.

The production, which has been conceived by director Jason Jacobs and dramaturg Jamee Freedus, is mounted with real dedication, and features a nifty set by Erik Flatmo that solves the spatial/logistic problems of CSV's Milagro Theater beautifully, as well as appropriate costumes by Daniel Urlie that telegraph character traits unerringly. The performances are all very funny, with Tim Cusack and Gerald Marsini clearly having a blast as the arch but empty-headed Jackson-Smiths and Anthony DiModica and Terrence Michael McCrossan equally deft as their bulkier, possibly dumber counterparts, the Tyler-Martins. Jamil Mena projects a welcome, grounded, otherness as the Fire Chief, emissary from the World Beyond. Matthew Pritchard makes a huge impression in the play's smallest but showiest role, the drag houseboy Mary.