Taylor Mac is a Fabergé radical: beautiful, ridiculous and full of hidden tricks. In both cabaret-style performances and more formal plays, the writer-performer—whose pronoun of choice is the puckish judy—pilots audiences through fantastical journeys, guided by the compass of a magnetic individuality. This latest work, very loosely inspired by Molière's The Bourgeois Gentleman, sends up the plight of artists who must prostrate themselves before powerful sources of funding. Mac's character is the choreographer of a ballet about Prometheus and gets the play's most outrageously funny running joke, which involves the cuddly character actor and savage playwright Wallace Shawn. But Mac and director Darko Tresnjak generously parcel out the biggest comic scenes to others: Jason O'Connell as a monstrously rich manchild with an unspeakably terrible name; Sierra Boggess as a glorious beacon of celebrity virtue whose name can only be sung in wonder; and Jennifer Regan as a pitifully abject artistic director. Bedecked in Anita Yavich's witty costumes, they're delightfully larger-than-life. The overall spirit is merrily pedagogical, and as always, Mac provides philophical food for thought; judy bites the hand that feeds judy, then spits the flesh in the audience's mouth like a playfully angry mother bird.
Prosperous Fools | Photograph: Courtesy Travis Emery Hackett