Evil Has a Lease on This Apartment: Nu Sass Productions' Everything, Devoured

Demons, Drag, and the Weight of Right Now

Let's get the concept out of the way: Reagan as a literal demon in drag works. It works because O'Malley Steuerman plays it with zero irony and total physical commitment, which is the only way it could possibly work. The moment you sense a performer is aware of their own performance, the whole thing collapses. Steuerman never blinks. The result is genuinely unsettling in the specific way that close-quarters black box theatre can be unsettling when everyone in the room is doing their job.

Gwynn is using that demon to make a pointed argument: that the forces that left queer Americans to die during the AIDS crisis while those in power performed indifference are the same forces operating right now, in different clothes, with updated talking points. This is not a subtle argument. It is not delivered subtly. The play looks directly at the audience and asks "what are you doing about it?". If that question makes you squirm, Gwynn would probably say that is the point.

The Ensemble: Taking Stock

In the role of Kore, June Dickson-Burke brought an admirable level of sincerity and heart to the stage. Her performance was defined by a quiet, lived-in intensity that favored emotional truth over theatrical artifice. There is a captivating stillness to her work that suggests a sophisticated internal engine.

Tristin Evans as Julian is the kind of performer who makes everyone else on stage better without appearing to try. The work is completely internal, completely specific, and completely convincing. There is no visible seam between the actor and the role. That level of truthfulness sets the temperature for everything around it.

Christian David Harris as Michael spends most of the play operating at a slightly different frequency from the rest of the cast — a little more presentational, a little more disconnected — which initially reads as a liability and in the end reveals itself as a deliberate and well-executed choice. Patience in performance is underrated. Harris has it.

Selena Renee Gil as Dante is doing the useful and genuinely difficult work of keeping the show from disappearing into its own weight. The comic timing shared equally with heavy textual revelation is hard to pull off. Gil makes it feel like a natural extension of the character rather than a theatrical mechanic.

Directors Tracy Erbacher and Ileana Blustein are clearly working from the same blueprint, and the blueprint is good. An atmospheric tension thickens as the night unfolds, layering the air with a palpable sense of unease. The cohesion of this show, in a world premiere, in a very intimate space, is not a given, and they have earned it.

The Blackbox Grit

I found it hard to dig up grit for this show. The whole thing worked. Somehow, despite the potential for catastrophe with this daring script, it really, really worked. The only flaws I can identify are minor: Steuerman's Reagan is fearless, but a handful of line deliveries arrived slightly ahead of the scene partner's cue, anticipating rather than responding.

June Dickson-Burke as Kore is emotionally invested throughout, but that investment is not always making it out of the body and into the room. Physical and vocal specificity would do a lot of work here.

The musical moments are maybe the one place the production loses the plot, and the culprit is length. Cut them in half and the energy stays in the room. At full length, they stall the momentum the directors have worked hard to build.

The apartment door is left cracked open for the entirety of the show, despite actor entrances and exits. Every visual choice is a choice the audience reads. Close the door.

Everything, Devoured is a world premiere that knows what it wants to say and says it. The production around it is sharp where it counts and alive in a way that matters. Nu Sass Productions is a company making theatre with a point of view, with the craft and guts to back it up. Katherine Gwynn is a playwright asking the right questions at the right time. This is close encounter theatre and you are going to have to deal with the answers.