Bunbury

April 30, 2007
Peter Paige, who played Emmett Honeycutt in Showtime’s Queer as Folk, takes on the title role in a full-cast recording of Tom Jacobson’s play. Bunbury, a never-seen character in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, joins forces with nonappearing Romeo and Juliet figure Rosaline (Crossing Jordan’s Kathryn Hahn) to travel across the literary canon to empower his brothers and sisters in literary purgatory (including Blanche DuBois’s young husband in Streetcar Named Desire and George and Martha’s offstage son from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), conjured as plot devices but never brought to life. The pair’s intrusions inadvertently transform dark tragedies into lighthearted comedies. Jacobson adds a slightly more serious twist to the frivolity by shedding light on gay subtexts in classic works. Paige and Hahn both inhabit their roles skillfully. The allusions require a solid grounding in literature, particularly drama, to fully grasp and appreciate. Perhaps too referential for the most mainstream of audiences, Bunbury will appeal to erudite listeners with an appetite for irreverence.