“Angry Fags” is a campy play full of oddball characters and dialogue that feels human yet hilarious. It’s also about queer sorrow and rage inspired by homophobia and is a dialogue between ideas on how to resist bigotry.
"Angry Fags," running at the Bartell Theatre from Nov. 1-16, was put on by StageQ, a Madison organization dedicated to theater covering LGBTQ+ topics.
At the start of "Angry Fags," the audience is introduced to Bennet Riggs (Jonah Hirst) and Thomas “Coop” Cooper (Jack Garton) as they share a bottle of wine, joke about their work crushes and use explosives to assassinate a political opponent.
After that flash-forward, the first act of the 120-minute play introduces Bennet as a communications staffer on the team of Georgia State Sen. Alison Haines (Molly Maslin). Haines is up for re-election, an incumbent accused of prioritizing her own agenda as a lesbian instead of the needs of the people.
On top of political conflict, "Angry Fags" follows a romance between Bennet and Adam (Matt Reines), the chief of staff on Haines’ campaign. Bennet and Adam’s relationship is supported by their coworker Kimberly (Vi Williams) — that is to say, as a married straight woman, she thinks it's hot that two guys are kissing. Kimberly is probably the funniest part of this play, at one point giving Bennet a brief list of gay guys she thinks he should hook up with “for her.”
After a day on the job, Bennet returns home and exchanges some very real-feeling banter with his roommate Cooper. Cooper tells Bennet about running into Bennet’s ex-boyfriend Sammy the night before, and the roommates mock Sammy for going home with an unattractive and straight-looking man that night.
Then Cooper gets a call that Sammy has been found badly beaten — that man Sammy “went home with” is the prime suspect. The reality shift that happens at this moment is what “Angry Fags” is best at. From this point on, suspense and narrative discomfort slowly build as comedy and tragedy sit side by side and eventually blur together.
While his boss sticks to a moderate and politically-conscious response to the attack, Bennet is enraged. He laments the homophobes that perpetuate these attacks don’t fear any repercussions from the gay community. Bennet and Cooper discuss how someone needs to strike fear into their hearts so that they can “protect the tribe” from these attacks.
Cooper becomes this protector when he sees Sammy’s attacker outside of a Home Depot and murders him, leading into the play’s second act.
Things quickly start to spiral out of control. Bennet and Cooper start to assassinate homophobic public figures, and the play’s central conflict as one between moderation and extremism shines bright through the second act as the roommates kill their homophobic political opponents.
This might sound serious, but it cannot be stressed enough that despite an increasingly dark subject matter, "Angry Fags" remains hilarious throughout. The bleak yet queer dialogue between Cooper and Bennet is a constant delight. They fluctuate effortlessly between trivial gossip and where to draw the line when it comes to killing their enemies.
Even though the play was originally performed in 2013, the political messaging of the play is relevant in the current political moment — with Haines and her opponent Peggy Musgrove (Renee Reed) in many ways reminiscent of the recent presidential election.
Musgrove, a Black woman running as a republican, is particularly threatening to Haines because she is more of an outsider than Haines. Though Haines was once an activist, she has mellowed out into a part of the political machine in the time she’s been in office.
Similar to 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Haines is reluctant to take an extreme position on anything for fear of losing moderate voters. Some of her campaign staff agree with this stance, but Bennet disagrees in a way that drives him away from the campaign and toward Cooper’s extremism.
In one scene, Adam and Bennett briefly discuss their divergent viewpoints on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, arguing about why she lost. One argues that she failed to win over the electorate because she was tied to Bill Clinton and did not become the feminist icon she would have if she left him.
With how this play has been consistently updated to include modern political references, I would be shocked if there was not someday a version of this play where this discussion is more focused on Harris than Clinton. The discussion of Clinton clinging too close to her husband and losing votes from the left maps straight onto Harris clinging too close to President Joe Biden and losing votes from the left.
Ultimately, the central dialogue between liberalism and leftist extremism that this play walks the audience through resolves without clarity. Both perspectives are treated rationally and fully argued through, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions. In the end it is unclear about who is correct on what the best way to achieve their political motivations are.
However, it should be noted that while there is a political question at play, there is no doubt as to the moral question — Bennet and Cooper kill too many people for that debate to have two sides.
In a 2015 interview with Backstage Magazine, playwright Topher Payne said that “if you can make someone laugh, they listen. And they lean in, and they want to hear more. And once you have that level of engagement, then you can start layering in a message that you want them to take away.”
"Angry Fags" embodies its creator’s philosophy.
