EAT YOUR ART OUT
The first rule in a Nomenil production is that there are no rules. Time and space are stretched and distorted in any direction that will serve the needs of an imaginatively cheesy script. Melodramatic hallucinations intrude on mundane moments like unexpected party guests bearing cheap but exotic gifts. Absurdly overdone characters, with names like Madame Quiche, A. Fag, and Crueller Pigg, race about the stage tearing through thick, literary monologues. Losing your bearings is rarely this much fun.
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Conkle and Evans’s consciously gay theater turns conventional notions of sexuality on their head. The more devotedly heterosexual a character is, the more he or she is drawn inexorably into boring normalcy. Conkle and Evans carry on the tradition of Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theater Company, whose grandly theatrical, gender-befuddling plays helped establish camp as a powerful theatrical tool.
