←Recommendations of Big Angry Dyke

What fun! Sharon Goldner's "Big Angry Dyke" delivers a hefty dose of karma to holier-than-thou Christian Anita Bryant, the former beauty queen turned orange juice pitch-person and archnemesis of the LGBT community. The setup is old as time--someone meets the grim reaper, who in this case appears as a gender-neutral hippie. But in Goldner's romp, the otherworldly news for Bryant is extra-grim, and seriously hilarious. A schadenfreude fantasy, to say the least! Seriously smart writing.

A very funny play about God, his angels and karma. In this case the lesson is love and acceptance. Well done.

Plays like this restore my faith in God and his deliverance of just rewards. Delightfully arch and deliciously vengeful, to watch Anita Bryant (and, by extension, others of her nasty ilk) get a taste of her own medicine is a gleefully satisfying experience, and even if it’s only in the form of a revenge fantasy, it’s a damn good one.

This is a “what would happen” “I wish it were so” kind of play in which the audience get to fulfill and act out fantasies they didn’t even know they had: Anita Bryant gets the announcement from an angel she’ll be returning as a “Big Angry Dyke” for her next life. In her writing Goldner to great effect mixes surreal features, dark and drastic humor, swift dialogue, two colorful characters, all together creating a really satisfying, but also deeply thought-provoking theatre experience.

You might think Anita Bryant has been out of the spotlight so long that she is no longer relevant, but therein lies the beauty of Sharon Goldner's play. Attitudes like Bryant's are just as prevalant today as in the 70's, and using her as this play's vehicle allows us to step away from our current views to gain the perspective necessary to appreciate what's going on here. I haven't even touched on the humor in the piece. In Goldner's classic style, the humor serves to highlight the greater point Goldner is trying to make, and also softens our defenses.

Anita Bryant gets hers in this clever short play. I love how Goldner delivers a snappy comeuppance — in the form of a sassy angel — But I'm even more moved by how the writer develops this portrayal of what a lifetime of hate and judgement do to a person. Here, Bryant's beauty queen persona is stripped to fear and frailty. It's satire at its finest.

Face it: you never thought you wanted to see Anita Bryant again. But you were wrong. This biting (but fun) play with marvelous, barbed dialogue gives us a look at the fate in store for our least-favorite orange-juice hawker. Lots of great specifics and very well researched. I saw this at a staged reading recently, and the actors had SO MUCH FUN with these words!