Stated bluntly, Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot is a fairy tale. Refined, reflective, whip smart, and endearing, this play sets to tackle that flash moment in 2017 where a young Prince George visited a landing strip in Hamburg, Germany, looked at a helicopter in little boy wonder and adults of all ages took to the internet to say “wow, he’s visibly enjoying himself way too much — he’s probably going to grow up to be a faggot…”

I was reading this and crying, cause like, if I think about it, I (like many, perhaps) got called “faggot” well before I even knew what the goddamn word meant; so long that I stopped being hurt and started responding “That is correct, yes. How may I help you?” 

At the core of the morality tale of this play is the moral conundrum of how very few of us (oh God, a Prince even, or perhaps especially a Prince?) are safe from the perils of unchecked (furthermore unwanted) perception.

Set in a hallucinogenic future (2032), and narrated in parts by a consciously correct chorus, the play deals in an alternate universe where Prince George DOES in fact grow up gay and finds his own Prince Charming — and the chaotic tumult and catharsis that erupts. Finding the love of one’s life while the entire world is watching can in fact simultaneously be a fairy tale as well as a new form of hell; heaven help us all.

Now I can admit that I had my reservations about this play. Firstly, I am (I confess) a cultural swine piece of shit American who is so emotionally checked out on the subject of who exactly  “the leaders of the free world” are, that I approached this beautiful text with a headache.  

Dear reader, I deeply implore you to understand that if I look across the linear timeline of what I recall of like, my political engagement in life, all I can say I remember is partying WAY TOO MUCH during The Bush Years (the second “Bush Years”, to be exact) and having a very doubtful existence on paper during every other President I’ve lived through; and this is my experience IN MY OWN COUNTRY MIND YOU — I don’t think I’ve ever actually known a goddamn thing about The Royal Family of the United Kingdom? I shit you not when I tell you I actually had to google what their actual last name was because I had only ever referred to them as “The Royals” (apparently it’s Windsor?).

The action of this play sets to spell out the endless conundrums of (included but not limited to) interracial sex, seemingly contradictory class positions amongst two loving homosexuals, dating a rich white boy, dating an Asian top, poppers, Communist Daddy issues, chaotic bottoms, “ew, my boyfriend is an art major, what will my parents think?”, and also (somehow?) deep ruminations on contemporary dance? This is all tea.

Tannahill, in this offering, being both a concise and beautifully unjaded narrative, has done the heavy lifting of making these very celestial themes of love, duty, commitment, and perhaps most importantly abandon, and made them all Earthbound.

At the brass tax of the moral conundrum of all this drama is the simple fact that be one a divine normal or a future king, most people are (by laws of physics) widely incompatible.

How we deal with and move on from this problem is the stark definition of love.

Heaven help us all.