Queer playwright Roger Q. Mason explores the love that dared not speak its name between Abraham Lincoln and his “close friend” Elmer Ellsworth in Lavender Men, at once a gay American history fantasia, a very public therapy session for its self-described “black, fat, femme” author, and one of the most stunning productions in town.

The gender-nonconforming Mason stars as Taffeta, a “fabulous queer creation of color,” who lets us know from the get-go that the story she has to tell is “one of yours, but it’s gonna come through me.”

What motivates Taffeta to tell this particular tale is, in her words, “the abuse of America’s icons for the purpose of biased politics and racial erasure,” and if we’re expecting a “daguerreotype-real” Abraham Lincoln with “eye bags, wrinkles, and all that jazz,” well that’s definitely not the Abraham portrayed by the young, lean, and handsome Pete Ploszek.

Despite Abe’s doubts that fairy godmother Taffeta can help him rewrite history (and in so doing give our 16th president the happily ever after he never had), Alex Esola’s strapping hunk of an Elmer seems more than primed to help Taffeta achieve her aims.

And so we turn back the pages of time to the days when lawyer Abraham Lincoln had recently lost a bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate, and Elmer was “the best drill sergeant in Illinois.”

But not for long.

Frustrated by the likelihood that he would never rise above the rank of sergeant general, Elmer quits the military to clerk for Abe, and before long the two men are skinny-dipping in the river and exchanging enough long, longing looks to keep an audience on the edge of their seats in hopes that the hunky twosome will finally get down and dirty.

Thank goodness Taffeta is there to urge the two men on despite the presence of Abe’s wife Mary (just one of several roles Mason shape-shifts into) to put a wrench into their budding romance.

Though scenes in which Mason deals very publicly with issues of self-esteem, body image, and race make Lavender Men seem at times like two distinct plays that don’t always mesh, the fantasia offered up by Mason/Taffeta is a fascinating one (and more than a few historians have suggested that the real-life Lincoln and Ellsworth may have been more than just very good friends),

The doubly charismatic Ploszek and Esola bring Abe and Elmer to vivid, compelling life, and though historically and dramaturgically accurate casting would have had Abe almost a foot taller and twenty-five years Elmer’s senior rather than of similar age and height, the two rising stage-and-screen stars inhabit their roles so believably and generate so many romantic/sexual sparks between them, the disconnect between reality and fantasy matters far less than it ought to, and as Taffeta has told us, this is revisionist history after all.

As for Lavender Men’s playwright-star, Mason is fabulousness personified as Taffeta, an army cadet, a maid, a sparkly, spangly chandelier, and a tree. Yes, a tree.

Best of all, Lavender Men scores an absolute bullseye in Lovell Holder’s supremely ingenious direction and an absolutely dazzling production design.

Scenic designer Stephen Gifford and properties designer Michael O’Hara fill the walls of Lavender Men’s office-and-other-locales set with an abundance of yellowed pages torn from history books and black-and-white portraits of the era, backs it with Abe’s image as a collage of 8½x11-inch sheets, and the armoire that serves as an entrance-exit is an inspired touch for the play’s two closet cases.

Add to this Dan Weingarten’s spectacular lighting, Wendell C. Carmichael’s alternately historically accurate and fanciful costumes, and Erin Bednarz’s enveloping sound design enhanced by David Gonzalez’s stirring original music, and you’ve got a production design that ranks as one of the year’s best.

Last but not least, Jobel Medina has choreographed a man-on-man love scene to exquisite effect.

Lavender Men is produced for Playwrights’ Arena and Skylight Theatre Company by Gary Grossman and Jon Lawrence Rivera. Tyree Marshall and Michael Kearns are associate producers.

Dylan Southard is dramaturg. Ann James is intimacy director. Casting is by Raul Clayton Staggs. Judith Borne is publicist.

Though not all of Lavender Men worked perfectly for me, the overall effect of Roger Q. Mason’s World Premiere fantasia is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It is an imaginative, exhilarating addition to contemporary LGBTQ theater.

Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles.
www.skylighttheatrecompany.com
www.playwrightsarena.org

–Steven Stanley
August 22, 2022
Photos: Jenny Graham

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Playwrights' Arena, Roger Q. Mason, Skylight Theatre Company