Theater: Acorn Theatre / 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
In Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party, a fourth-grade Christmas pageant in Abraham Lincoln's rural Illinois hometown sets off a firestorm of controversy when it calls into question Abraham Lincoln's sexuality. A thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny, and uniquely American story unfolds, offering surprises at every turn. Each of the play's three acts lets the audience see the story through a different character's viewpoint - and at each performance the audience decides in which order the acts are performed, creating a Rubik's-like theatrical event. Finally, a truly democratic theatergoing experience! What could be more American than that?
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August 12, 2010: Heaven knows a seductive title can be tempting. “Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party,” for example. Granted, this grabber would not be much of a draw in American burgs that prefer tea at their parties, figuratively speaking. But for certain subsets of the culture — New Yorkers with puckish senses of humor, say — it’s likely to be pure catnip.
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August 12, 2010: The latest show to move from the Fringe to off-Broadway is “Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party.” But Aaron Loeb’s comedy isn’t likely to improve the Fringe’s poor transfer stats. The amiable play overflows with good intentions, but it’s also torn between camp and earnestness.
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August 12, 2010: When you read the words "Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party," what phrases immediately come to mind? That's right -- "political relevance" and "moral complexity." Aaron Loeb's script for the improbably universal gay rights comedy is built on the tricky no man's land between the nuke-the-heartland and tolerate-the-intolerant extremes of liberalism, and almost none of his characters are wholly evil or wholly righteous. Though the plot and staging are less balanced than the characters, the production's overwhelming good humor more than atones for its shortcomings.
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August 12, 2010: The hypocrisy of media, the Right Wing, and even gay activists are broadly and unsubtly skewered in Aaron Loeb's ambitious new work Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party, now playing in the Acorn Theatre in Theatre Row. Loeb's agenda is both comic and earnest, and his dichotomous tracks combine to create an evening that while fitfully amusing is also tiring, particularly in director Chris Smith's uninspired staging.
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August 12, 2010: What would you expect from a winner in last year’s New York International Fringe Festival entitled “Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party”? Yes, seven Abraham Lincolns in stovepipe hats, topcoats and beards disco-dancing and playing in a jug band and having fun with a plucked plastic chicken.
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