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Reviews & recaps of three gay events in NYC: 'Messy White Gays,' 'Brolesque' & 'Men in Motion'
December 7, 2025
Three NYC events to report on, each one gayer than the next …
Messy White Gays
First up is the just barely off-Broadway confection Messy White Gays, directed by Mike Donahue.
Written by its star Drew Droege, the show is 80 minutes of laughs that feels like a smoothie made up of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Larry Kramer’s divisive novel Faggots and really, really Mean Girls.
The play will never be protested for not adhering to the principle of truth in advertising, laying into Manhattan’s white A-gays over their hedonism, shallowness, performative purity and privilege.
No time is wasted — we open on the fabulous high-rise apartment of ruthlessly hot Brecken (James Cusati-Moyer) and his feckless Smucker’s heir beau Caden (Aaron Jackson) standing over the dead body of their murdered boyfriend. As in Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, that corpse gets a lot of attention, and as in Weekend at Bernie’s, it sees its fair share of action.
More shocking than the idea that our heroes are introduced as killers is how briskly callous they are about it. This was no accident. The motive? Simply to rid their world of boredom. This attitude sets the tone for a play that is exuberantly arch, self-critical and iconoclastic, but never more concerned with depth than with comedy.
As funny as the writing is, it might not have worked without a cast committed to nailing the timing, and to mining laughter from every word, situation and gesture.
Almost immediately, the conspiring former throuple is unwillingly joined by Thacker (Peter Zias), the play’s Emory, the spawn of Paris Hilton and Scott Thompson’s Buddy Cole, who couldn’t be dissuaded from keeping their brunch date. Zias is doing ohmigod’s work, never failing to exclaim something slightly unexpected at exactly the right moment. He is gifted, and his Thacker is a gift.
Then there is Addison (Derek Chadwick), the group’s perfectly built Insta-stud. Channeling Betty White, he’s almost too naive to be hot — but let’s not get carried away. Interestingly, while the ad for the show that haunts me on Facebook is an image of Addison shirtless and blood-spattered, the play doesn’t get him naked — instead letting the actor pull his weight another way, with maddening Gen Z proclamations.
Well into the proceedings, Brecken and Caden’s downstairs neighbor Karl (Droege) shows up, ostensibly to meet with the deceased about buying a designer credenza … not realizing his dead body has been hastily stuffed inside. Still not as bad as some Facebook Marketplace transactions I’ve had.
Watching Karl and Thacker scratch each other’s eyes out is like having dessert twice. It’s such a delicious, evenly matched, intergenerational catfight, with each scoring too many points to tally — Karl calling out Thacker’s vapidity, Thacker underscoring Karl’s age.
Perhaps the play’s funniest line is when Karl effortlessly seethes to Thacker, “YOU are going to grow into a very strange-looking adult.” It’s nasty, it’s clever and it is Gen X-coded — think of the curse of Gary Coleman and other cute child stars who matured in unfortunate ways.
I will assume you’re aware of Droege’s brilliance. His Chloë Sevigny parodies are the stuff of legend. His Bright Colors and Bold Patterns (2016) and Happy Birthday Doug (2020) were intelligent, incisive, funny as hell. To me, he is like my generation’s Paul Lynde, a totally unique jester who radiates an inner life. But unlike Lynde, Droege is out, so he is not our secret, or secretly tortured, friend, but our representative onstage. (And in film — see last year’s Queer.)
This is not to say Messy White Gays is flawless — some of the jokes slip from outrageously politically incorrect, as intended, to flatly declarative and brutal. A few feel slightly too specific or dated. But with as many jokes as there are in the script, the audience I saw it with was either smiling or howling throughout.
And when the play travels, the script’s use of local hangouts and landmarks can be adapted to any city — the mere mention of Hell’s Kitchen Mexican joint Arriba Arriba killed.
A welcome entry in the awful-people-who-make-us-laugh genre, Messy White Gays, when it works, is like Oscar even Wilder, and lands like Droege’s not terribly defensive answer to the cancel craze.
Interestingly, on the night I saw it, seconds after it came to a screeching halt, Droege was encouraging us to donate cash as part of an AIDS-charity drive, a breakneck pivot to earnestness that unintentionally signaled the scathing play that had come before was, like Joan Rivers, just kidding.⚡️
Messy White Gays is at the Duke on 42nd Street through January 11.
Brolesque: XXX-Mas
The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be … Locky.
That’s because also gay — but not just white and the opposite of messy — is Brolesque: XXX-Mas, the on-point, skin-baring male burlesque revue put together by dancer-choreographer Locky Brownlie that is currently turning it out at Balcon Salon.
You may recognize Locky — he’s a staple of pop-diva tours and has shut down Broadway Bares more than once with his killer looks, body, Aussie accent and moves. With this holiday edition of Brolesque — just nominated by BroadwayWorld for a Best Burlesque Cabaret Award — he’s now coming for Christmas.
While proud of his work as a dancer, Locky points out there is a difference between being the indispensable garnish in a production and being the featured performer.
“There’s a few dancers that obviously can pull a bit of a crowd towards them, and they do become a bit of a name. But everyone needs to have that chance,” he says. Sounding like a dream boss for any guy with a lot of chorus boy experience, he goes on, “You don’t need to be always putting the ensemble at the back, in line number seven. You know what I mean? We can command the stage.”
Currently touring with Gottmik and Violet Chachki on their Knockout Tour, he tells me his expansion into burlesque and his desire to give queer people the spotlight are wholly organic.
“I’ve been in the dance industry, professionally, since I was 17, 18. I’m a backup dancer for all the big pop stars — Katy Perry, J.Lo, Britney, Taylor Swift. I’ve done musicals like Wicked on Broadway and in Australia and a bunch of TV, movie gigs here and there. I’ve done my fair share of the big A-list stuff. But I wanted to create something that was a little bit more sexy, a little bit more in touch with my queer background — or who I am, basically — and to have an opportunity to, I don’t know, create something new, something different, and really try and build this brand and see where we can take it and really give our community something to look at and go, ‘Yeah, this is high-quality, fierce production.’”
He has accomplished it in Brolesque with a troupe of male beauties who are on the same page, combining dance with some humor and unapologetic sexuality, slipping casually from masc to femme and back again.
In the show, their numbers include Christmas classics “Santa Baby” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but [insert Blaine & Antoine Men on Film tone] from a male point of view. On that tip, you’ll expect a ginger Gingerbread Man (Jason Carroll signed his page in the Red Hot calendar mid-performance when I went), you’ll nut over the show’s Nutcracker (Gabrièl Reyes) and there will be reindeer capable of guiding your sleigh, especially at night.
The audience eats it all up like Christmas fudge. If the guys asked Santa Claus for dollar bills this year, he’s already delivered.
As for Locky, all he wants for Christmas is continued success. “I think this year, we’ve had some really great moments and I’m starting to feel it,” he says. “People are talking about it. I even had someone say that someone was talking about it in London the other day. I created it as a little bit of a side project to just start working on my creative aesthetic. It’s getting bigger and bigger than what I had imagined, but I’m loving it because for me, I’m able to be so creative.”
Where does Locky get his drive? He’s worked with the best of the best, and while he could never choose his favorite diva who’s ever cut him a check, he tells me one of the hardest workers he has ever witnessed up close was the Spider Woman herself, Jennifer Lopez.
“I remember there was a moment I was so exhausted. I was, like, dehydrated. I was tired. We were rehearsing shows back-to-back-to-back. I went to the bathroom and I literally had to give myself a pep talk. I was like, ‘Locky, you can do this. This is a dream job for a dancer. You’re finally here. You have to do this.’”
Post-pep talk, he says, “I pulled myself together and I went back out there and we did another run of the show and we finished the tour.” And through it all, J.Lo was setting the pace. “She’s a powerhouse,” he says admiringly. “She works just as hard as everyone else.”
And so does Locky Brownlie, who always sees things through (and looks great in see-through things).
The proof of his perfectionism is in Brolesque: XXXmas. Add it to your list.⚡️
Brolesque: XXX-Mas is at Balcon Salon (674 Ninth Ave., NYC) through the holidays.
Men in Motion: Selections from the After Dark Collection
Finally, I made it to SoHo Project Space last week for the closing-night for Men in Motion: Selections from the After Dark Collection, devoted to a cache of male nudes that came from the estate of After Dark editor Bill Como (1925-1989).
The images — mostly by Roy Blakey and Kenn Duncan, but including the work of others, too — were stunners, and as a special treat, Blakey’s niece Keri Pickett stopped in to share a sizzle reel for Uncle Roy, her doc devoted to her uncle’s life and legacy.
I Spoke to Keri Earlier This Year HERE
Keri spoke eloquently about Blakey, addressing how he was so much more concerned with his world-class ice-skating collection than he was with his incredible male nudes. Blakey, who died at 94 last year, seemed to be slightly embarrassed by his nudes, in spite of the fact that they are extremely artful.
Perhaps, as for other men from his generation, being bullish on an artistic expression that literally laid naked his sexuality simply was not in the cards.
At any rate, he did come around some, and participated in a late-in-life exhibition in NYC in the ‘90s. With Keri’s direction, he was able to have all of his precious work — his male photography and his ice-skating treasures — preserved forever at the Tretter at UMN, based in his home state.⚡️