Many moments in Bruce R. Coleman’s Mythical Beastie call to mind a play that was staged at last year’s Pride by Second Thought Theatre: Cock, by Mike Bartlett.
There’s a gay man (Gregg Gerardi) prepping for an awkward dinner party, making strained conversation with the woman (Nikki McDonald) who is the intended sexual conquest of the man he’s lived with for years. There’s a man (Blake Blair) so torn up by his confused feelings that he risks alienating both of the people he claims to love. There’s an honest debate about the invisibility of bisexuality. But luckily for this year’s audience, Mythical Beastie is the funnier, smarter, and eminently more quotable younger cousin to Bartlett’s British play.
Coleman, who also directs, plumps up his Oak Cliff-set script with Dallas-based bon mots that range from clever (“The safe word is Hockaday”) to tired (“I can’t believe you actually live in Addison!”). The dialogue is strongest when Coleman lets his characters indulge their quirky sides—McDonald relishes many of the show’s best lines—but can also flip in an instant, racing from laugh-out-loud funny to brutally emotional. Blair especially handles the raw moments with grace, somehow managing to make the typical Dallas douchebag a sympathetic human being. Before this play, I too thought that was only a myth.
