Theatre Review: Unbury Your Gays Fixes the Future
Broad Theatre’s production reveals false histories
Reviewed by Cat McCarrey, Fri., June 6, 2025
Years ago, playwright Maxine Dillon wrote a Tumblr post musing that “there should be more stories about gay people coming back to life.” How appropriate – Tumblr is the ideal incubator for queer roots and media discourse. Dillon’s popped-off post – about the “bury your gays” TV trope, in which queer characters die in high numbers without reason – expanded in her mind, ballooning into a complicated storytelling experiment mixing times and tellings with a tale of unearthing identity.
The mirror has two faces, and so does Dillon’s Unbury Your Gays, a Broad Theatre production and world premiere. On the one hand lies the first act, a linear 24-hour period in the lives of middle school besties. On the other hand lies a second act rife with bold narrative swings, involving a historical interlude, pantomime, and a quick timeline rush.
It begins with two BFFs pregaming their eighth-grade dance with a sleepover full of scary movies, giggling, and scheming galore. Dillon’s script captures the meandering nature of late night tell-alls. The conversation between Carolina (Amara “Mars” Johnson) and Sawyer (Iliana Griffith-Suarez) wildly weaves, quick-moving and abrupt, a constantly shifting target outmaneuvering anything too deep.
The undercurrent between the two thrums with unspoken truths. Both actors handle the tension impressively. Johnson’s Carolina exudes yearning for her friend, an all-encompassing but hidden obsession. She speaks volumes with her eyes: the fear of revealing too much, the physical cringing away while still seeking stronger connection. There are moments where Sawyer seems reciprocal, but Griffith-Suarez plays the bubbly avoidant all too well. Her exuberance for life is so infectious that it’s easy to understand Carolina’s crush. That push and pull between friendship tiptoeing into something more substantial is Unbury Your Gays’ driving strength.
It helps that the first act presents 2000s perfection. Anthony Pinder’s scenic design nails a moment in time, from the Gilmore Girls DVDs in the bedroom to Sawyer’s cut-up and modified T-shirt. Along with the recognizable sleepover, there’s a middle school dance scene that’s pure ecstasy, reliving the cringiest dance moves and chitchat over a pitch-perfect playlist. “Cha Cha Slide” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”? Pinch me, I’m in a nostalgic fever dream. The true mic drop belongs to Delan Crawford’s moves as Jess, the object of Sawyer’s heteronormative crush, all Bieber hair and Spanish class nicknames. His dance routines – massive shout-out to choreographer ET – almost blew the roof off the theatre with their explosiveness.
Then the second half takes a turn for the tangentially related topics, hard launching into Edwardian-era epics with the Necromancer Witch. This fictional franchise was alluded to as the spooky show the girls watched in Act I, but the origin story given in Act II feels much more fusty than any frightening flick teen girls would squeal over. It’s part Frankenstein and part The Hours, offering sapphic yearning with a smattering of resurrecting souls. Mostly narrated directly by Johnson as the Necromancer, with Griffith-Suarez and Crawford performing graceful pantomime alongside, it’s an interesting gambit that goes a smidge too long. The scary movie originally described the Necromancer as a ferocious creature, a resurrection witch, but this monologuing menace holds no fear. I can’t reconcile the clawed figure of Carolina’s fears with this Necromancer’s sad soliloquy.
The first act writes checks the second struggles to cash. It’s close – just a dollar or two short. Dillon’s willingness to play with story is admirable. It’s a risk few would be willing to take. It falls just short of flawless, but I still defy anything to live up to the crystalline purity of the initial sleepover. It’s an incredibly evocative flashback for everyone in the queer millennial crowd.
Broad Theatre’s Unbury Your Gays
Hyde Park Theatre
Through June 7
