Loosely building on Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Merry Me promises a night of raucous laughter and sapphic horniness, but attempting to be a statement on society might be its undoing.
On an island not so far away from the vulnerable coasts of the enemy state, a mysterious blackout makes it impossible for Agamemnon to pursue his war but, more importantly, leaves his army without access to electricity—making it impossible to call home or watch porn. In fact, the only electrical devices that seem to function are vibrators…for some reason. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Merry Me is a melting pot of classic sapphism, contemporary theatrical canon, and extremely contemporary pop culture references.
I left the theater with an aching in my abdomen from laughing so hard. Every second of the production is jam-packed with jokes—some executed more eloquently than others. The partnership of Leigh Silverman’s direction and Hansol Jung’s writing proves to be a stylistic triumph! The wink-wink-nod-nod style of the text and the performance rarely ceased to be anything less than gut-bustingly hilarious. Silverman, yet again, proves that she is a master of rhythm and movement as Merry Me seems to be a perpetual motion machine with actors seamlessly replacing each other as scenes change, giving the audience no time to even consider being bored.
Where the production falls flat for me, however, is its insistence on being a statement on the white supremacist patriarchy. 2020 was a time of reckoning for all of us, and it seems that for a show to be considered progressive, it needs to make some sweeping statement about the rightful path to the other side of the white patriarchal rainbow. In Merry Me, this takes the shape of a C plot in which the Angel from Angels in America (I’m not being cute. That is completely canon) instructs a character to embark on a mission to brutally murder half of the cis, straight white men on the planet. While the outlandish mission fits in the campy world of Merry Me, Jung writes herself into a hole in which, for that plot to resolve, she has to put her foot down and make a statement about the “right” way to deal with existing in a white supremacist state. And who wants to put their foot down about that? Though this C plot provides Jung with the opportunity to write some hilarious scenes, I ultimately found it distracting from the heart of the piece, which I inferred to be the commentary on sapphic relation in literature and the uplifting of sapphic romance to that of the classics. To that point, the inclusion of pop culture references and the metatheatrical structure worked to encourage the audience to resist the intended catharsis of the source material, I sometimes found them to betray the intelligence and eloquence of Jung’s writing. It often felt like low-hanging fruit.
With standout performances from the ensemble and creative design, Merry Me was one of the most enjoyable nights I’ve had at the theater in a while. Hansol Jung has definitely proven herself a standout voice in the industry, and if she trusts her brilliance, she will continue to make her mark on the canon.
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