SOMEONE ELSE FROM QUEENS IS QUEER
William S. Burroughs is only one of the many characters Richard Elovich portrays in Someone Else From Queens Is Queer, though the protagonist is someone called Felix the Kat. Elovich begins the performance in the persona of Felix’s beloved, dashing Gordie Benjamin, who speaks in a nasal, twangy, almost exaggerated Queens accent. Later Elovich changes the accent, the voice, the intonation, and the bearing to impersonate different people: Felix’s mother, the bartender Giacometti, Felix’s father, and Herman Munster.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The piece starts in almost unnerving full light, both on the performance area at Gallery 2 and on the audience. As in Goat Island’s recent appearances at the Wellington Avenue Church, the lighting makes the audience unwitting accomplices in the unfolding action. Unlike Goat Island, here there was just one performer. Elovich, who could see every slight action or facial twitch in the audience, was not beyond glaring at the person sitting next to me–my mother–who had pulled some gum out of her mouth and was scrabbling for a piece of paper from her purse to put it in. When he looked at her with his piercing Peter Lorre eyes she stopped, and didn’t even try to put the gum away again until he’d turned to grab a chair.
Heroin addicts are not known for their sense of responsibility. They’re not easy to watch, and they’re even more disturbing to know. It’s problematic to try to describe this life in a sympathetic way, but Elovich shows how love pierces the veil created by cocaine and heroine to create a metamorphosis in Felix. In the telling the story becomes a morality tale. By the conclusion Felix is beyond blame, piety, and anger; he makes no excuses for himself or his behavior. He tells disturbing details about the life of a heroin addict, yet brings us through the denouement with grace.
