HOSANNA
Theatre Praxis
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The play covers the late-night aftermath of a disastrous costume party: the cross-dressing Hosanna’s elaborate Cleopatra costume, on which he’d worked for weeks, was an object of ridicule. Further streaking Hosanna’s mascara is live-in boyfriend Cuirette, who continues mocking the costume after the party and boasting about his sexual conquests. In their seedy apartment, illuminated by the flashing neon lights of a pharmacy sign, they argue and throw things to avoid thinking about the fact that they’re getting old.
Hosanna conceals his wrinkles with pancake makeup, and Cuirette tries to hide his gut by wearing his pants way too tight. Approaching their 40s, they still haven’t come to terms with their own identities. Cuirette carries on his macho charade, imitating Marlon Brando, and Hosanna inadequately impersonates his screen heroine, Elizabeth Taylor. “When I’m dressed like a man, I’m ridiculous,” muses Hosanna. “When I’m dressed like a woman, I’m ridiculous. But I’m really ridiculous when I’m stuck between the two.”
Howard Casner’s Queen Christina Goes Roman is a more ambitious and politically relevant work but ultimately too jumbled, gimmicky, and inconsistent to succeed. Uncomfortably blending wisecracking farce and dead-serious drama, the play giddily crosses temporal and geographic boundaries–it’s an impressive feat of imagination but, at almost two and a half rambling hours, sometimes a chore to sit through.
