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Now Streaming: LAVENDER MEN (2025)
Mason gives the audience the feeling of being one of the first to witness an A-bomb mushroom.
Pete Ploszek as "Abe" and Roger Q. Mason as "Taffeta."
LAVENDER MEN (2025) / Lovell Holder / Writers: Lovell Holder & Roger Q. Mason from their play / Cinematographer: Matthew Plaxco (1.85:1) / Design: Stephen Gifford / Composer: David Gonzalez / Editor: Morgan Halsey / Intimacy Coordinator: Talya Klein / Acted by: Roger Q. Mason, Pete Ploszek, Alex Esola, Philippe Bowgen, Chad Callaghan, and Mia Ellis / USA / Distributor: Pride Flix / Not Rated / 102 mins.
It put my heart at ease to learn that Lavender Men wasn’t simply canned theatrics, a poor person’s version of National Theatre Live — that television-safe nether world, neither cinema nor theatre, where the actors get to leave the room but the audience doesn’t.
Alone, at the back of the small theatre space, sits stage manager Taffeta (Roger Q. Mason, grab onto something). The show Taffeta is working must not have many cues, considering how much time Taffeta spends cruising the Back Door app instead of manning the light and sound consoles. Loneliness has long leapfrogged past the point of irritability to full-on personality dyspepsia. A perturbed Taffeta refuses a patron a bottle of water, claiming that the rules of the theatre don’t allow concessions to be sold after the intermission. Technicalities were made to be broken. No sooner is the thirsty annoyance out of sight than we cut to Taffeta gulping down a bottle.
Taffeta is the thinking person’s answer to Tyler Perry’s Medea, a blended black, Filipino, queer, TGNC and plus-size character who wishes the world could see the same reflection beaming back at themselves in the mirror, not the body-dysmorphic freak they fear others envision.
Video:
Trailer: LAVENDER MEN
The performance in question is a badly thought-out biopic of Abraham Lincoln. They/Them know a miasma when they smell one; as in, the play stinks. To aid in endurance, Taffeta concocts another reading of the character. Time spent swiping right is replaced by hours fantasizing about the gay sex life of our 16th President. What follows is an intricate fantasia, concocted by and for Taffeta, in which daydreams can be put to good use by filling the empty theater space with a semi-historical account of Lincoln's clandestine love affair with a legal clerk.
The stories unfold in various chapters, each individually titled, with Taffeta bringing a guileless sense of over-theatrical theatricality (and fashion) to each section. (Taffeta plays so many characters, one half-expects an appearance as Nancy Hanks' ghost.) Don’t look for prefabricated kitsch meant to spoon-feed the personality-deprived in attendance. There’s more than a little of the larger-than-life Notorious Beauty Divine trapped inside Taffeta. No matter what abominations the haters might hurl, our star can always come up with something crueler and even more self-deprecating. Mason gives audiences the feeling of being one of the first to witness an A-bomb mushroom.
The director and star’s friendship dates back to their teens; their sense of shorthand can be felt in every crackle of dialogue. Then, all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, a call goes out for a handheld camera bobbling up and down like a like stuck yo-yo. This isn’t set on a seagoing vessel or a roller coaster; most of the action takes place inside a theatre. With a force like Mason to contend with, one needs something to settle the camera, not add further shake and shimmy. ***
Now streaming at a platform near you!
Here's something you might be interested in.
Now Streaming: LAVENDER MEN (2025)
Mason gives the audience the feeling of being one of the first to witness an A-bomb mushroom.
Now Streaming: LAVENDER MEN (2025)
Mason gives the audience the feeling of being one of the first to witness an A-bomb mushroom.
Pete Ploszek as "Abe" and Roger Q. Mason as "Taffeta."
LAVENDER MEN (2025) / Lovell Holder / Writers: Lovell Holder & Roger Q. Mason from their play / Cinematographer: Matthew Plaxco (1.85:1) / Design: Stephen Gifford / Composer: David Gonzalez / Editor: Morgan Halsey / Intimacy Coordinator: Talya Klein / Acted by: Roger Q. Mason, Pete Ploszek, Alex Esola, Philippe Bowgen, Chad Callaghan, and Mia Ellis / USA / Distributor: Pride Flix / Not Rated / 102 mins.
It put my heart at ease to learn that Lavender Men wasn’t simply canned theatrics, a poor person’s version of National Theatre Live — that television-safe nether world, neither cinema nor theatre, where the actors get to leave the room but the audience doesn’t.
Alone, at the back of the small theatre space, sits stage manager Taffeta (Roger Q. Mason, grab onto something). The show Taffeta is working must not have many cues, considering how much time Taffeta spends cruising the Back Door app instead of manning the light and sound consoles. Loneliness has long leapfrogged past the point of irritability to full-on personality dyspepsia. A perturbed Taffeta refuses a patron a bottle of water, claiming that the rules of the theatre don’t allow concessions to be sold after the intermission. Technicalities were made to be broken. No sooner is the thirsty annoyance out of sight than we cut to Taffeta gulping down a bottle.
Taffeta is the thinking person’s answer to Tyler Perry’s Medea, a blended black, Filipino, queer, TGNC and plus-size character who wishes the world could see the same reflection beaming back at themselves in the mirror, not the body-dysmorphic freak they fear others envision.
Video:
Trailer: LAVENDER MEN
The performance in question is a badly thought-out biopic of Abraham Lincoln. They/Them know a miasma when they smell one; as in, the play stinks. To aid in endurance, Taffeta concocts another reading of the character. Time spent swiping right is replaced by hours fantasizing about the gay sex life of our 16th President. What follows is an intricate fantasia, concocted by and for Taffeta, in which daydreams can be put to good use by filling the empty theater space with a semi-historical account of Lincoln's clandestine love affair with a legal clerk.
The stories unfold in various chapters, each individually titled, with Taffeta bringing a guileless sense of over-theatrical theatricality (and fashion) to each section. (Taffeta plays so many characters, one half-expects an appearance as Nancy Hanks' ghost.) Don’t look for prefabricated kitsch meant to spoon-feed the personality-deprived in attendance. There’s more than a little of the larger-than-life Notorious Beauty Divine trapped inside Taffeta. No matter what abominations the haters might hurl, our star can always come up with something crueler and even more self-deprecating. Mason gives audiences the feeling of being one of the first to witness an A-bomb mushroom.
The director and star’s friendship dates back to their teens; their sense of shorthand can be felt in every crackle of dialogue. Then, all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, a call goes out for a handheld camera bobbling up and down like a like stuck yo-yo. This isn’t set on a seagoing vessel or a roller coaster; most of the action takes place inside a theatre. With a force like Mason to contend with, one needs something to settle the camera, not add further shake and shimmy. ***
Now streaming at a platform near you!