For a decade New York’s the TEAM has gnawed away at the American dream, in shows combining popular culture references with a steely intellectual rigour. They came of age with Mission Drift, the 2011 musical satire charting the rise of American capitalism up to the collapse of the sub-prime market.
Their latest – a two-hander with glorious echoes of Thelma and Louise, itself a subversion of the traditional buddy movie – takes us on an exhilaratingly bumpy ride into the myth-making landscape of America, seen through the prism of masculinity and the performance of gender. It’s a road trip in which lonely gay small-town meatpacker Ann, who identifies strongly with Elvis Presley, meets outgoing, widely travelled taxidermist, Brenda, who hails from North Dakota, where Theodore Roosevelt had a ranch.
Presley, the poor boy who reinvented himself, was an admirer of the 26th president of the US, a sickly rich kid who grew into a manly man accruing more privilege along the way.
The differences between Ann and Brenda are more than geographical, but it spurs Ann into taking a trip to Graceland, which she does in the company of her hero, Elvis, who brings along his hero, Teddy. It’s like your imaginary friend having an imaginary friend. If that sounds odd, it is, but in a useful way as it continually lays bare the myth of America as a land of endless opportunity that allows you to be whoever you want to be.
The pleasure is in the piece’s highly developed sense of the ridiculous, as Libby King and Kristen Sieh play not just Ann and Brenda but also channel Elvis and Teddy, with stuck-on moustaches, bad wigs and a winning ebullience. It’s a joyride into the construction of identity, and one with unexpected emotional resonance as it charts Ann’s well of loneliness, and all our desires to leave some mark upon the world, however small.
- At Royal Court, London, until 14 November. Box office: 020-7565 5000. Tickets available at the Guardian box office.
