Red Tide Blooming

Run, don't walk, to PS122 to see Taylor Mac's Red Tide Blooming before it closes next Sunday.

Inspired by equal parts Jack Smith and Jackie Curtis (it even features a performance from Ruby Lynn Reyner, who played the lead role in Curtis' Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit), and cleverly incorporating a bevy of downtown luminaries and their signature acts into its Wizard-of-Oz-like plot, Red Tide Blooming is Mac's hyperkinetic tribute to NYC as the once and future home for the freak in all of us.

With its almost revue-like format, the production occasionally threatens to run away with itself. One suspects that this was meant to be, but the odd monologue finale feels like it was there primarily to remind us that Mac, whose character Olokun mostly cringes in the corner through most of the play, is actually its star. Still, hats (and bras and undies) off to Mac and his cast of characters for braving the red tide rising in this country with their unmitigated and unapolegetic outrageousness. Not coming soon to a gay cable channel near you.