Paul Melendy & Gabriel Graetz. Photo: Maggie Hall Photography.
Presented by Central Square Theater
By Charles Ludlam
Directed by David R. Gammons
Cast: Gabriel Graetz (Jane Twisden, Lord Edgar Hillcrest, et al), Paul Melendy (Nicodemus Underwood, Lady Enid Hillcrest, Alcazar, et al)
May 28 – June 21, 2026
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
Review by Craig Idlebrook
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Theater is full of silly mashup plays that provide ample opportunity for cartoonish violence and rapid costume changes, but few, I would argue, can help us laugh at the terror of our times as well as the 1984 comedy of The Mystery of Irma Vep, expertly staged at Central Square Theater in Cambridge. The play bear-hugs the penny dreadful genre, with homages to creature features of Victorian vampires, mummies, werewolves, departed former wives and more. Nods to Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde (and probably 15 other references I didn’t catch) are thrown in for good measure.
All of this is translated through the unmistakable camp lens of queer theater, as playwright Charles Ludlam stipulated that a cast of two same-sex scene partners must take on a dizzying number of characters, both male and female. Revealing costumes, ripping bodices, blowup dolls, and scare wigs add to the campy flair, as does the fourth-wall shattering interactions between the cast and audience. Cast members Gabriel Graetz and Paul Melendy exquisitely navigate the precise beats and improvisational moments needed to pull off the frenetic pace of the comedy, leaving the audience, and their characters, in stitches.
But the precise, modernist, and purposely sterile set and lighting design hints that there is something deadly serious afoot in the midst of all this campy fun. The earnest beats between the two actors tucked within the moments of madness also open the door for deeper meaning on stage.
Ludlam, a gay American playwright, wrote this play in the midst of some of the most maddening moments of the AIDS epidemic. In the year that the play premiered, the autoimmune disease had already killed a recorded 3,500 Americans, most of them gay men. There was little to no treatment to combat it.
Queer communities had mobilized for activism to combat the epidemic, the CDC had identified the transmission routes of HIV, and many knew we were facing a health crisis. Despite this, then-President Ronald Reagan could not bring himself to mention HIV for another year, and his press secretary openly mocked it in press conferences. Too many Americans considered AIDS to be just a gay disease and wouldn’t be moved to discuss the humanitarian crisis until news broke that it was affecting children and heterosexual communities, as well.
Against this historical backdrop, it is easy to see the power wielded by Ludlam as he writes about an unlucky cast of characters trapped together in a house that makes no sense, fighting against their baser, supernatural instincts and trying to uncover secrets of which no one will speak. The campy action offered, and offers, catharsis for those in the audience trapped in the absurdity of a world gone mad.
We need the license that camp provides now more than ever to speak of the madness we face, especially as subjects once again become taboo in public discourse.
In late 2024, as it became clear that Donald J. Trump had won a second term in office, nonprofits (including the one I was employed by) began to scrub their sites of mention of LGBTQIA+ issues in hopes that the work they did could continue under the radar. It did not save them, as much of that work was halted with the DOGE massacre of nonprofit budgets, including vital global work to provide HIV medications and emergent disease screening. Now, as in 1984, people are dying because of the U.S. government’s decision to close its eyes and cover its ears on this and so many subjects.
If you, like me, are struggling with holding onto truth in the waves of censorship and doublespeak of this protofascist moment in American history, please allow yourself the shelter of this play during Pride month to make sense of the insanity of everyday life in America now.
