Review - BASH'd: A Gay Rap Opera: Love Changes Everything

After earning high accolades from its appearances in both New York and Toronto's Fringe Festivals and winning a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) award for "fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation," the Canadian-created BASH'd: A Gay Rap Opera has moved to the Zipper Factory Theatre for an Off-Broadway run. And while this imaginative and theatrically invigorating celebration of gay marital rights and condemnation of random acts of hatred certainly has its heart in the right place, the awkward sympathy of the story's ending prevents me from giving the show a fully enthusiastic recommendation. I'll try and tiptoe my way through that part later without revealing too much, but first let me tell you about the 90% of the show that comes off extremely well.

Directed by Ron Jenkins with crisp, exacting bursts of energy that smoothly mix the script's humor, romance and bubbling rage, BASH'd tells a story of operatic proportions completely through a narrative rapped to recorded music both sampled and composed by Aaron Macri. Performed by its two authors, the piece opens with the slick and well-groomed Feminem (Nathan Cuckow) and the rugged, bling-laden T-Bag (Chris Craddock) rhyming a prelude that sets the evening's style of translating elements of hip-hop, an art form which has often been accused of glorifying violence and homophobia, into a gay-friendly celebration. Their language is graphically sexually, but used to promote healthy, consenting lustful activity. Violence is communicated honestly and in bloody detail, but without glorification.

After shouting out for responses from all the "homos," "lesbians," "mother fuckn bi-curious," "straight women what brought their gay friend," "trannies," and "straight dudes who sucked a bit of dick in college" in the house (curiously excluding straight women who came on their own and straight dudes with no gay experiences in their past) they encourage "all you real faggots" to "pump your wrists in the air" as a way of reclaiming negative stereotypes. ("We don't like "faggot" when it's said by them / But when we say it, it's like a word that starts with N.")

Then comes the bulk of the show, inspired by the heated debate over Canada's 2005 legalization of gay marriage, particularly in Alberta where hate crimes against homosexuals sharply increased as that province's premier, Ralph Klein, fought vigorously against equal rights. Feminem plays Dillon, an insecure lad growing up with a dad who encourages him to be anything he wants to be... except gay. T-Bag plays Jack, who grows up as the son of two gay dads, secure with his sexual preference. With rapid-fire rapping that, for those who care to hold hip-hop lyrics to musical theatre standards, contains quite a lot of pure rhyming, they tell the story of how the two meet in a bar (their free-wheeling descriptions and portrayals of a drag queen, a Chelsea boi, a twink, a bear and other denizens of their night spot are the comic highlights of the night) and eventually fall in love and get married.

But after Jack gets brutally attacked by three gay-bashers Dillon grows tired of combating hate through support groups letter writing campaigns: "All I want to do now is find a straight guy and beat him / Bash him up with my fists and violently defeat him / It don't matter who he is, cuz they're all the same / I want to humiliate him and cause him some pain."

And this is where the authors lose me. Because even though they are obviously not defending the choice to commit violent hate crimes against straight people, the innocent (presumably) straight guy Dillon picks a fight with and others who get involved are scripted and portrayed in a way that seems intentionally written to make them seem the hateful ones, keeping the lovers sympathetic despite behavior which is no better than that of the three who attacked Jack. What happens next to the husbands is so romanticized and scripted to make them seem the victims that the positive end the authors supply loses its impact. I'm not suggesting Craddock and Cuckow aren't sincere in their final remembrance of real-life targets of hate crimes, but it doesn't ring true when the characters they portray don't acknowledge the hatred and bigotry of their own actions.

Nevertheless, their acting performances do ring true, establishing a warm, touching relationship even as they skillfully switch back and forth from T-Bag and Feminem to Dillon and Jack and a variety of other characters through the perpetual motion of their presentation. Despite my personal objections, BASH'd is an admirably realized and strikingly original work that tries to do some good for the world.

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