Playboy un-funnies

Legends are printed and shredded to ribbons in Glory, an astonishingly well-calibrated demonstration of technical wizardry, textual analysis and embodied historiography from the independent collective We Quit Theatre.

Across two hours, this performance invites audiences back in time behind the gates of the Playboy Mansion, a self-mythologized Xanadu overseen by publishing magnate Hugh Hefner (impeccably portrayed by Emma Beech, whose serpentine delivery consistently surprises and delights).

Other guests to the party include undercover bunny Gloria Steinem (Dasha Plett), a hapless Shel Silverstein (Arne MacPherson) and a charismatic MC (the banjo-plucking Dhanu Chinniah) who serves as a spiritual guide and protective spirit as the dreamhouse turns nightmarish.

Like the listeners of the gender-affirming album that forms the sonic backbone of the production, Glory is free to be whatever its creators decide it should become, and the result is a brilliant, modernist portrait of trans liberation — from theatrical expectation, from societal oppression and from the rigid binary gazes that silence, censor and threaten equitable expression by marginalized groups.

Described by the company as a contemporary dance docu-drama and a transfeminist fantasia, the experience brought to the stage by director Gislina Patterson feels like an indie magazine rendered in multiple dimensions, flipping past the flat centrefolds to reveal well-rounded truths.

This idea is thrillingly realized by a pair of high-powered props: an office printer and an air-blower retrofitted with a shredder, where throughout the performance, online comments and transphobic missives are routinely sent to bed.

At centre stage, lit with intensity and restraint by designer Max Mummery, is a circular, blue velvet platform, rigged to rotate by Dan Chatham. The material communicates twin layers of exclusivity, typified by Hefner’s smoking jacket and by the roped boundaries that prevented public interaction with the dehumanizing scenes that occurred behind closed doors at the mansion.

The platform is also a direct reference to Hefner’s circular bed, upon which, during several heartrending discursions, the cast breaks the fourth wall to describe both their own experiences and those of the women whose bodies served as the foundation of Playboy’s legacy. These vulnerable moments are shared with considerable strength and life-affirming courage.

Even with the weight of those moments, Glory maintains a light touch, a playfulness. This balance is best exemplified during the printer-dance sequence, in which comments under a transphobic op-ed in the New York Times — some silly, some cruel and some downright inscrutable — are printed and shredded as the performers do the monkey dance.

The performers are each clearly in tune with their viewers, and with each other, routinely displaying patience to allow every moment to breathe. Before the opening scene, director Patterson advises audiences they’re allowed to leave the theatre if they feel the need, that it’s the wish of the creative team for each guest to feel comfortable in their space and in their bodies.

That level of creative integrity and communal care is rewarded by the audience’s rapt attention: every moment in Glory is one to behold.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca