Unbury Your Gays review: Historians Will Say They Were Just Friends…

Amara Johnson and Iliana Griffith-Suarez in Unbury Your Gays.

Whether necromancers in 18th-century London or middle schoolers in modern-day Texas (yikes), the end result is the same. Historians will say they were friends. Good friends. No, great friends. Best friends even. Who looked out for one another, knew each other's most intimate secrets, and kept each other company on long, lonely nights–but Austin playwright Maxine Dillon knew better. Those two, sneaking glances at one another in between the book stacks, are much more than friends. 

Broad Theatre’s latest play, Unbury Your Gays, is a post-mortem of sorts. A re-examination of a friendship, the sapphic truths that lay within it, and the night that changed it all. I had the absolute pleasure of attending the world premiere this weekend and being painfully targeted by its subject matter. Unbury Your Gays follows Sawyer (Iliana Griffith-Suarez) and Carolina (Amara Johnson), two best friends at a sleepover the night before their big 8th-grade dance. Sawyer is bombastic, bursting to the seams with energy, and absolutely infatuated with boys. Carolina has more important things to worry about, like school, and hanging out with Sawyer, and looking at Sawyer and…where were we again? Ah, yes, Sawyer’s plan to have her first kiss at the dance seems to change everything about the friendship, and maybe not for the better.

Jess, Carolina, and Sawyer at the big dance.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this play. These are fairly nuanced topics, and under the wrong hands, they could easily fall flat. Fortunately, this was not the case with Unbury Your Gays. I was blown away by Maxine Dillon’s work. Dillon had such a compassionate yet devastating way of characterizing these girls. They felt authentic, which made watching them navigate their dynamic all the more precarious. And truly, to quote Trixie and Katya, this play has everything. Unbury Your Gays is as hilarious as it is heartfelt. There were so many moments where Dillon’s wit or one of the actresses' deliveries would have me belly-laughing. At the same time, I would have tears in my eyes from the vulnerable and complex conversations taking place on stage. I never in my wildest dreams thought such a unique experience would be presented so beautifully in a production. 

Is the sapphic middle-school best friend a canon event? I fear it might be. 

Beyond the overall story, it was the smaller details that resonated with me. The way the characters felt like 14-year-olds, daydreaming about growing up or lamenting parents with a rather stifling level of strictness (A topic I related to all too much). There’s even one part where the girls are talking about what bra cup size they’ll have in the future. It was such a tiny moment, but it felt like quintessential girlhood. Dreaming up who you will be when you’re kind of naive to who you already are. It showed so much of Dillon’s brilliance. 

Sawyer’s bedroom set in Unbury Your Gays.

But Dillon’s talents weren’t the only ones on display. As soon as Sawyer came out wearing hot pink AERO sweatpants and a mishmash of patterned camis and T-shirts, I knew this was going to be something special. Unbury Your Gays stabbed me in the heart with nostalgia. From the early 2000s princess TV (with DVD player!) to the pink mesh hammock used to hold stuffed animals that seemingly just appeared in your bedroom one day, everything was spot on. The costuming, the set design, it all just felt…familiar. Like I was staring into a portal of the past. 

Then came the actresses. Amara Johnson and Iliana Griffith-Suarez do a fantastic job of bringing these characters to life. Griffith-Suarez’s energy is infectious as she rambles off an endless list of excitements. Then, on the other side of the spectrum, we have Johnson, whose performance grounds the story significantly. Together, they are a perfect balancing act, weaving through these complex conversations with ease. And a special shoutout to Delan Crawford, whose portrayal as Jess made me laugh right before his depiction of The Historian gave me literal chills. 

Amara Johnson as the Necromancer in Unbury Your Gays.

All in all, I really loved Unbury Your Gays. It took such a complex situation and unpacked it with so much grace. In hindsight, this shouldn’t have been a surprise as honest and unique stories are kind of Broad Theatre’s thing. The nonprofit prides itself on producing stories written by and for people with marginalized genders, and this play certainly was no exception. For Unbury Your Gays, Broad Theatre even partnered with Gender Unbound, a nonprofit that empowers trans and intersex people through art, and Fund Texas Choice, a nonprofit that helps Texans acquire safe and confidential abortion care. 

So, for anyone who’s ever had that “platonic” friendship that in retrospect seemed definitely not platonic at all, or anyone who’s just a fan of good theater and wants to support local talent, I couldn’t recommend Unbury Your Gays more. And who knows, maybe they were more than just really good friends. 

Unbury Your Gays is showing at Hyde Park Theatre til June 7th. You can purchase your tickets here and learn more about the writer, Maxine Dillon.