The Walk Across America: Financial Times Review The Walk Across America For Mother Earth, Ellen Stewart Theatre, New York By Emily Stokes Published: January 25 2011 18:30 | Last updated: January 25 2011 18:30 Androgynous: ‘The Walk Across America For Mother Earth’ The first few minutes of The Walk Across America ... , written by Taylor Mac and directed by Paul Zimet, might make you wonder if you have stumbled into an amateur musical production of The Wizard of Oz. In a warehouse space minimally decorated with yellow road-markings, an eclectic crew of androgynous figures in garish face-paints, wigs, platform boots and grungy outfits sings half-tunefully about a journey across the heartland. Next, two actors, treading water with panto-theatricality, introduce themselves with the exaggerated friendliness of children’s television presenters while two stage-hands, dressed as a tree and the sky, play guitars. Restraint, sophistication and good taste are so defiantly ignored in this production that it comes as a surprise to discover that you have been utterly won over by it. Taylor Mac is a director whose style is characterised by sequins, ukulele music, and political activism. His last production, Lily’s Revenge, which won the 2010 Obie award, featured a cast of more than 40, lasted five hours and inspired envy in the audience for all the camp fun being had onstage. In The Walk he draws on his personal experience of a protest march from New York to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1994. Among the gang is the innocent 18-year-old Kelly (Mac himself); the leader, King Arthur, and his stinky girlfriend, Flower (Ellen Maddow of The Talking Band, who composed the music); the drag queen who longs to mother “stray gays” back in Tennessee (played with warmth by the “King of Boylesque” James Tigger! Ferguson); the Belgian with a tattoo of a Native American on his chest; the lesbian who insists on drinking her urine as a cure for her cancer. You couldn’t make them up. The diaristic script results in a defiantly un-PC, sexually devious, surprisingly moving and funny show – all of which spills into the interval, when the audience is treated to popcorn, lemonade, impromptu songs and other 90s hippie treats. Even without taking up the offer of a henna tattoo, you’ll find yourself chuckling at the memory of this show long after the cast has reached its Emerald City.

The Walk Across America For Mother Earth, Ellen Stewart Theatre, New York

By Emily Stokes

Published: January 25 2011 18:30 | Last updated: January 25 2011 18:30

Androgynous: ‘The Walk Across America For Mother Earth’

The first few minutes of The Walk Across America ... , written by Taylor Mac and directed by Paul Zimet, might make you wonder if you have stumbled into an amateur musical production of The Wizard of Oz. In a warehouse space minimally decorated with yellow road-markings, an eclectic crew of androgynous figures in garish face-paints, wigs, platform boots and grungy outfits sings half-tunefully about a journey across the heartland. Next, two actors, treading water with panto-theatricality, introduce themselves with the exaggerated friendliness of children’s television presenters while two stage-hands, dressed as a tree and the sky, play guitars. Restraint, sophistication and good taste are so defiantly ignored in this production that it comes as a surprise to discover that you have been utterly won over by it.

Taylor Mac is a director whose style is characterised by sequins, ukulele music, and political activism. His last production, Lily’s Revenge, which won the 2010 Obie award, featured a cast of more than 40, lasted five hours and inspired envy in the audience for all the camp fun being had onstage.

In The Walk he draws on his personal experience of a protest march from New York to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1994. Among the gang is the innocent 18-year-old Kelly (Mac himself); the leader, King Arthur, and his stinky girlfriend, Flower (Ellen Maddow of The Talking Band, who composed the music); the drag queen who longs to mother “stray gays” back in Tennessee (played with warmth by the “King of Boylesque” James Tigger! Ferguson); the Belgian with a tattoo of a Native American on his chest; the lesbian who insists on drinking her urine as a cure for her cancer. You couldn’t make them up.

The diaristic script results in a defiantly un-PC, sexually devious, surprisingly moving and funny show – all of which spills into the interval, when the audience is treated to popcorn, lemonade, impromptu songs and other 90s hippie treats. Even without taking up the offer of a henna tattoo, you’ll find yourself chuckling at the memory of this show long after the cast has reached its Emerald City.