“Everything will be devoured”
Until May 10th
Newsus Productions
sitar art center
1724 Kalorama Road, NW
$25 (general admission)
Nusass.com
As if the world wasn’t scary enough already, Kore, the trans female protagonist of nonbinary playwright Katherine Gwynne’s Everything, Devoured, wants to summon the devil into her modest Chicago apartment. While friends think of it as a after-work pastime, similar to reading horoscopes or tarot cards, the Kansas native is dead serious.
New Sass Productions’ world premiere of Gwynne’s play exudes queer energy. The message comes through as if coming through a horn. It’s not afraid to inflate expository dialogue or singular moments of strange joy.
In the truly intimate black box of the Sitar Arts Center in Adams Morgan, right next door to Harris Teeter, scenic designer Simone Schneeberg has deftly created an ordinary apartment. That mediocrity is only overshadowed by weak attempts at individuality, but that’s all about to change.
A plan is made and Kore (June Dixon-Burke) invites those closest to her home.
Her non-binary lesbian partner Julian (Tristan Evans) stocks cheap red wine and marijuana. Dinner is in the oven. Soon, her cheerful transgender best friend Dante (Selena Gil) arrives with a gift for the hostess. It’s a specially requested bag of pig’s blood that is essential to the night’s fun. Soon, friends in their 20s will be drawing a pentagram surrounded by salt in the middle of their living room floor. Candles are lit. Sacred words are spoken.
Designers Vida Huang and Dee Carey’s changes in light and sound each signal contact with the beyond. To the friends’ surprise, they succeeded in summoning the demon. That’s really great. Ronald Reagan plays an evil drag queen.
Wearing a corseted pinstriped suit adorned with several Gautier cones, the non-pronounced guest star from the underworld makes a big entrance, perfectly lip-syncing to Madonna’s “Vogue,” complete with wide flashing eyes, a wicked grin, and a popping tongue.
As the evil drag queen Ronald Reagan, brilliantly played by O’Malley Steuermann (“Baltimore actor, dragster, playwright, and producer”), he is snarky, provocative, and reads with a sharp wit that overshadows the other queens.
Entertainment doesn’t stop there. Soon, the devil was juggling provocative props (a fleshy dildo, a baby doll, a copy of Marx) and performing sock puppet shows to the tune of a 1982 recording in which journalist Lester Kinsolving asked about the “gay epidemic,” to which President Reagan’s press secretary Larry Speaks charmingly replied, “I don’t have that…and you?” That proved to be a real knee-slap in the press room.
In the first scene of the play, a young man sits unnoticed at Kore’s kitchen counter. Occasionally, he comments with a disapproving rant or an obviously gay one-liner. He is secretive from everyone, but the women of the house do not know about him until he attends a party. His name is Michael (Christian Harris). He passed away in 1989 and has been hanging around ever since.
Ironic and unmistakably ghostly, Michael is the play’s link to a strange past. He remembers the hurt and horror of the AIDS epidemic, but he doesn’t remember much about the emergence of “genderqueer” as an identity label reflecting a shift towards a broader gender spectrum. That came later.
Make no mistake, the uniformly queer cast is committed. They play queer characters with authenticity and give realism to the legitimate concerns and fears of queer people in our current climate. (For example, Dante, an anarchist and barista, accuses Julian of hiding behind his secure role as a social worker at a respectable nonprofit, and Kore talks about the fear surrounding a Kansas bill that would make it illegal for transgender people to display their gender on their driver’s license.)
Based in Chicago, Gwynne writes queer plays that pack a punch. And before this new work was performed, it was honored with the honor of being both a 2025 O’Neill Semifinalist and a 2025 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist.
Billed as a fiercely bizarre ghost story, “Everything, Devoured” does not disappoint. In the hands of Queer co-directors Tracy Urbacher and Iliana Bluestein, Gwynne’s frenetic yet thoughtful, fast-paced yet penetrating work unfolds convincingly.
The intuitive staging and chemistry between players, especially the two-hander scenes involving Kore, exhibit a quiet intensity that feels authentic. Other scenes highlight anger, protectiveness, and discord between the friends. Gwynne’s informed and powerful writing comes to the fore.
Nu Sass Productions has been uplifting women and marginalized genders in all aspects of theater since 2009. The company’s two-part name comes from “Nu” (Chinese for woman) and “Sass” (sassy).
Its latest product not only meets that requirement, but also some.
After the queer energy world premiere of “Everything, Devoured” appeared first on Washington Blade: LGBTQ news, politics, LGBTQ rights, gay news.
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