A FLAMING ROMP
It's Gay Gone Wild, but 'Wizzer Pizzer' is straight up with its tsk, tsk, tsk behaviors.
Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you are upset by effigies of Dr. Laura and Jim and Tammy Faye, gay and Latin stereotypes or characters who imagine Christ as a sex partner, you may want to avoid Amy Wheeler's "Wizzer Pizzer." With its naughty language, explicit sexual situations and world-gone-gay mentality, it's an equal-opportunity offender that will probably make your Baptist Republican brethren cringe. Of course, that's probably the point. Kevin (Topher Payne) collapses while performing "Over the Rainbow" at a talent night, then gets roughed up a bit and eventually passes out drunk in front of his TV. He's then sucked into a kind of conscious-unconscious vortex, where he meets a couple who run a prisonlike rehabilitation center for homosexuals. Self-indulgent, messy and kind of great, this world premiere has the potential to win a youthful cult following.
...Payne's auburn-maned Kevin looks nothing like the character's alter ego, Judy Garland. He's more like a strange mutation of Scarlett Johansson and Olympia Dukakis....
It's Gay Gone Wild, but 'Wizzer Pizzer' is straight up with its tsk, tsk, tsk behaviors.
Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you are upset by effigies of Dr. Laura and Jim and Tammy Faye, gay and Latin stereotypes or characters who imagine Christ as a sex partner, you may want to avoid Amy Wheeler's "Wizzer Pizzer." With its naughty language, explicit sexual situations and world-gone-gay mentality, it's an equal-opportunity offender that will probably make your Baptist Republican brethren cringe. Of course, that's probably the point. Kevin (Topher Payne) collapses while performing "Over the Rainbow" at a talent night, then gets roughed up a bit and eventually passes out drunk in front of his TV. He's then sucked into a kind of conscious-unconscious vortex, where he meets a couple who run a prisonlike rehabilitation center for homosexuals. Self-indulgent, messy and kind of great, this world premiere has the potential to win a youthful cult following....Payne's auburn-maned Kevin looks nothing like the character's alter ego, Judy Garland. He's more like a strange mutation of Scarlett Johansson and Olympia Dukakis....
UNDER THE RAINBOW
Curt Holman, Creative Loafing
In its world-premiere production at 7 Stages, Wizzer Pizzer revels in the comic possibilities of its timely subject, turns gender politics topsy-turvy and offers something sexy for every orientation.
Melissa Foulger directs Wizzer Pizzer's young actors to their strengths. An Atlanta playwright, Payne captures Kevin's esteem issues to find humor and occasional pathos, whether badly lip-synching to Judy Garland or attempting to impersonate a typically macho straight guy.
Interview with Jim Farmer, Southern Voice
The play stars Topher Payne as Kevin, gay man with problems. As the show opens, Kevin is tasting the defeat in another drag contest where he competes as iconic Judy Garland.
“He loses the competition and really loses his mind,” Payne says. “He has a spectacular nervous breakdown and decides to check himself into Dr. Nora’s ‘Getting Over the Rainbow’ Reparative Therapy Clinic.”
“He is sad and miserable, and he is not happy in the gay community. But he realizes at the clinic that the straight identity, the cure being offered, would be an artifice. These people who are at the clinic are being asked to suppress their gay identify by suppressing themselves,” Payne says.
Payne, himself a playwright who recently debuted his “Bad Mama” locally, associated with the character of Kevin.
“Kevin is at the beginning of a long and extended journey of accepting himself as a gay man,” Payne says. “I liked the script because it’s about getting over what your family or your own expectations are about who you should be as a gay man and getting back to yourself as a person. The script is very funny and dirty — I liked that."
Curt Holman, Creative Loafing
In its world-premiere production at 7 Stages, Wizzer Pizzer revels in the comic possibilities of its timely subject, turns gender politics topsy-turvy and offers something sexy for every orientation.
Melissa Foulger directs Wizzer Pizzer's young actors to their strengths. An Atlanta playwright, Payne captures Kevin's esteem issues to find humor and occasional pathos, whether badly lip-synching to Judy Garland or attempting to impersonate a typically macho straight guy.
Interview with Jim Farmer, Southern Voice
The play stars Topher Payne as Kevin, gay man with problems. As the show opens, Kevin is tasting the defeat in another drag contest where he competes as iconic Judy Garland.
“He loses the competition and really loses his mind,” Payne says. “He has a spectacular nervous breakdown and decides to check himself into Dr. Nora’s ‘Getting Over the Rainbow’ Reparative Therapy Clinic.”
“He is sad and miserable, and he is not happy in the gay community. But he realizes at the clinic that the straight identity, the cure being offered, would be an artifice. These people who are at the clinic are being asked to suppress their gay identify by suppressing themselves,” Payne says.
Payne, himself a playwright who recently debuted his “Bad Mama” locally, associated with the character of Kevin.
“Kevin is at the beginning of a long and extended journey of accepting himself as a gay man,” Payne says. “I liked the script because it’s about getting over what your family or your own expectations are about who you should be as a gay man and getting back to yourself as a person. The script is very funny and dirty — I liked that."
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