REVIEW: The Tribe | Renegade Productions at The Blue Room
There’s a hairy drag queen in a sequined dress lying on a lounge, bathed in magenta light. There are cow skulls sitting on shelves next to vials of curious things and strange artefacts. There are two black-clad angels with white wings posed on either side of the room. There is music in the air, a kind of music that makes you think you’ve arrived in some deep inner sanctum. In fact, you have.
The lounging drag queen awakes and comes forth to perform some kind of mysterious ritual. The angels attend and we realise we are watching God at work on her creation. Scene two plunges us into the moral struggles of the two attending angels. Love is the matter, God’s love, humanity’s love, the angels’ love. God is needy, jealous, vain, self-obsessed; the angels long for something more, or different, than God’s pure love and they are conflicted. One wants to leave her Heavenly life behind in favor of more earthly pursuits, while the other is reluctant to change. In confronting their love for each other, something happens that alters their fate forever.