Reviewed by Tracey Paleo, Gia On The Move
Joshua is having a psychotic break. And it includes funny, violent episodes with bible versus, forbidden sex, entrails, ogres, milkmaids, crucified saints and a sexy red witch about to be burned at the stake.
Joshua Marsh is fresh out of pastor’s college and delivering his first sermon to a conservative church in Southwest Virginia. His trial run will determine if he will join the church staff as an Associate Pastor, something he’s longed for his whole life. However, Joshua is painfully awkward, queer and deeply closeted, which he’s been told his entire life is wrong, sinful, evil, and abnormally defiant of a god who only loves him, if he identifies and lives in one kind of masculine framework. As the sermon goes on, Joshua unravels to the point of madness and quite possibly, true spiritual enlightenment. It’s all about to go up in flames…or would that be…straight to hell?
FLAYED is outlandish and utterly unrestrained. Weird and wonderful, and quite painfully like the definition of its name, this show quite literally peels away the skin of a forced cover identity, leaving bare a finally whole human being. It is an evening of perversely joyous ecstasy through the animus of utter madness. Writer/performer Josiah Blount (The Gambler, Ted 2, Modern Family) is boundless in craft and exploration and takes this performance well beyond the outer limits of his own ideas of acceptance.
FLAYED is zany and hilarious, wicked and devastating, and at its conclusion a wholly satisfying experience that should not be missed, let alone denied.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Written & Performed by Josiah Blount. Directed by David Bridel founder and Artistic Director of The Clown School. Associate Director Taubert Nadalini, Produced by Josiah Blount, Co-producer Michael Lyons, Choreography Taylor Sieve, Poster Photography by Maxwell Poth, Press Representative Ken Werther.
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