55 Shades of Gay
Written by Jetron Neziraj
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Qendra Multimedia (Kosovo)
La Mama Theatre Workshop
March 15, 2019
Production website
💉 out of 5.

55 Shades of Gay has the very best of intentions.  It sets out to be a burlesque production about LGBT politics in the Balkans. At its best, it is is an irreverent and satirical in look at the world the LGBT experience, systemic corruption, crippling unemployment, and crumbling infrastructure in Kosovo. 

Kosovo has it rough.

  It seems to the last stronghold in the EU to adamantly hold on it its homophobic agendas.  No matter how much pressure the EU places on the country, they white knuckle their prejudice to the end.  It must be what American felt like decades ago.  

The play is almost unbearably earnest.  It plays with avant-garde at a very juvenile level.  It is as if they were watching some tapings of La Mama’s work in the 1950s for all of its “shocking” possibilities.  Lots of abstract.  Lots of atonal chanting, lots of semi-nudity, and lot’s of poetry that perhaps lost something in its translation to English – – essentially NOT a very engaging evening of theatre.  

But come on – you weren’t expecting great theatre.  You are expecting to see a group of people with an overriding desire to make a statement and pick up theatre as its most interesting picket sign. 

The U.S. premiere of 55 Shades of Gay was supported by the Open Society Foundations and other funders including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. The production was presented in the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa, March 7–17, 2019.