In “an act of queer prognostication”, playwright Jordan Tannahill’s majestic new work Prince Faggot conjures a near future (2030s-40s) where a member of the British Royal Family—Prince George—not only publicly comes out, but gets married to a man. It is a premise inspired by the viral “gay icon” photograph of a four-year-old George back in 2017 that got the Internet buzzing. It was a news story that had some complaining that a child was being “sexualized”. But as the play’s cast addresses in the show’s lively and engaging prologue—using their real names, but scripted and in character as performers—as a society we are conditioned to accept a “hetero default” where all kids are assumed to be straight. A society where it is deemed acceptable for adults to playfully speculate about whether young children have a romantic partner, as long as those jokes stick to the heteronormative.
Rather like Shakespeare’s Chorus in the opening of Henry V, which is referenced at one point, Tannahill’s players acknowledge us as an audience and the artifice of the theatre—”the faggot’s palace”—as they detail the reasoning for the exploratory work they are about to stage. It will be “a fabulation” made up of “queer spirits and magic” we are told, as they go on to announce which characters they will take on. Throughout the play, each performer—beginning with the commanding and charismatic Mihir Kumar—delivers a monologue, most of which reflect back on the burgeoning awareness of their queer or trans identity, by themselves and those around them, and how their parents or society attempted to stifle it, while insightfully commenting on the themes of the play they are helping to stage.
Each cast member also interacts with a projected photograph of their younger selves, which brings all the poignancy of RuPaul asking her top Drag Race queens to speak directly to images of themselves as queer kids. Though here the reflections are more biting. The production’s spare but impactful staging, with set design by David Zinn, also contributes to the breaking of the fourth wall, with the back of the stage and dressing rooms visible throughout. There is a makeup table stage left, used during a transformation between characters at one point, while the performers sit alongside the stage to observe the action when they are not involved.
As the royal scene opens in 2032, an 18-year-old George (a terrific John McCrea, getting the balance between soulful and petulant just right) in his first year studying Art History at Oxford, comes out to his immediately accepting parents William (K. Todd Freeman) and Kate (Rachel Crowl) who say all of the right things. Neither seems to personally have an issue with him being gay, and are hardly surprised. After all, let’s not forget William was an Attitude magazine cover star in his youth, back in 2016. But everything is filtered through the question of ‘What does this mean for the Monarchy?’
Tannahill’s William does have a problem with the surname of the older, 24-year-old graduate student their son is dating, Dev Chatterjee (Kumar). All William says on the matter is “Pardon?” and “Oh, interesting.” But as both Freeman and Crowl make clear with their funny and deliciously nuanced performances, that apparently neutral reaction could not be more telling. It is stiff-upper-lip British Royal speak for, “WTF?!” Institutional racism is not lost on Dev. Before their relationship becomes public, Dev muses that in the public’s mind, due to their difference in ancestry and privilege, George will always be viewed as “a white gay prince”, while Dev will be seen as a “brown faggot”.
William’s instinctual response is to troubleshoot how this relationship can be “framed the right way” to get the public on their side. When Dev meets the parents for the first time at one of the Royal residences, the intimate family event quickly turns into a PR crisis briefing with no-nonsense communications director Jaqueline Davies (David Greenspan in multiple roles, also taking on the family’s long-serving gay butler, and a spectral Edward II) who blows into the room like a hurricane leading to one of the show’s highlights. Greenspan delivers a vibrant tour-de-force in the scene, with inspired vocal and physical choices. Jacqueline is a fast-talking, Pellegrino-sipping, larger-than-life creation straight out of Absolutely Fabulous, outrageous and hilarious, yet skillfully grounded by the truthful details of Greenspan’s performance and Tannahill’s sharp writing. The PR-guru has speedily complied a detailed dossier on Dev and his family, anticipating every potential press angle. “MI5 has nothing on Jaqueline”, George informs Dev.
George’s younger sister Princess Charlotte (N’yomi Allure Stewart) is also part of the family party that weekend and throughout the play Stewart is a delight in the role, beautifully capturing the easy closeness and tight bond between the siblings. Stewart impresses with her versatility, also taking on the roles of royal servant Astrid, a paramedic, and King James I in a sublimely trippy scene. While her speech “out of character” as a performer is enthralling and gave me chills.
The passionate queer love story at the centre of the play is swooningly romantic and searingly sexy. In Kumar and McCrea’s hands, the chemistry between Dev and George is palpable and we genuinely care for them as a couple. As they continue to date though, their stark differences in outlook feels insurmountable. For instance, what George views as his “civic duty” in joining the Armed Forces, Dev perceives as him being part of the “military-industrial complex”.
We’ve come a long way from Will & Grace, but LGBTQ+ characters in the arts—even in the more adventurous realm of the theatre—often still feel somewhat sanitized, defanged, and made unobjectionable for a general audience. As George puts it to his father, it’s “The unimaginable horror of faggots that you can’t stomach”, adding “I’m not mummy’s sweet little mincing fawn anymore“. Here, even the title is a playful provocation and defiant reclaiming of the word faggot by Tannahill as he revels in the power of imagining and telling our own unfiltered queer stories.
Just as Jeremy O Harris (one of this production’s producers) boldly put gay sex centre stage on Broadway with Slave Play, Tannahill’s approach to sex is breathtakingly daring in how authentic it looks and sounds. (Audience members’ phones have to be powered down and placed in a locked pouch on entering the theatre). Not only is there popper-fuelled, multiple-position simulated penetration on stage with some light choking—in an exceptionally choreographed scene by intimacy coordinator Dave Anzuelo’s UnkleDave’s Fight-House—but there is the accompanying explicit sub/dom dialogue, that makes the action seem all the more explicit. With Dev calling his boyfriend a “chaotic bottom” as he pukes from the poppers, he admits he’ll only top the Prince because his “ancestors would never forgive” him for getting royally fucked. The Crown could never.
As George spirals, the play’s further explorations of kink are not simply there to shock, with Tannahill meditating on gay fetishistic sex’s “utter obliteration of the ego” enabling the exchange of “one ritual world for another”. There is also a captivating and rather poetic monologue about fisting delivered by Greenspan (who happens to have fittingly small hands).
In dramatizing the Royal Family—given our tabloid familiarity with its real-life figures—there is a risk of a soap opera quality that Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film Diana was accused of. But Tannahill’s work is never in danger of that. It is closer in spirit to Mike Bartlett’s acclaimed King Charles III, and his characters feel real and lived in while maintaining an enticingly meta edge to them in keeping with the framing of the play. It helps that he’s speculating about the future rather than recreating well-known events. The play feels grounded by references to royal incidents including scandals involving Harry at a costume party in his youth and Prince Andrew’s infamous connection with Jeffrey Epstein. There is also some fun, occasionally disturbing speculation about the future world these characters inhabit.
There is pleasure to be had in the way the play taps into the fasciation that so many of us have with one of the most public families in the world, who we think we’re intimately acquainted with, but actually know very little about behind those golden palace doors. Tannahill uses these royal figures and “commoners”, just as Shakespeare did, to tell stories exploring society and human nature. The premise proves to be a fascinating prism through which to examine the way society’s pressures and expectations shape all of us to some degree.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s direction keeps things tight, dynamic and riveting, hitting the perfect balance between the knowing, meta framework and the truth of each scene. While Tannahill’s dialogue crackles with electricity making his characters sound like real people without losing any of its poetry.
Pulsating with unapologetic queer sexual energy, Prince Faggot is funny, penetrating, raw and provocative. It also manages to be tender and thought-provoking, while leading somewhere truly unexpected and moving.
By James Kleinmann
Prince Faggot ran at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater through Sunday, August 3rd, 2025 and will transfer to Studio Seaview (305 W 43rd St) from September 11th, in an extended run through December 13th, 2025. For performance schedule and to purchase tickets head to PrinceFaggot.com.