All the Queen's Men

New York's
current governor is blind, and its previous governor
resigned amid a call-girl scandal. But did you know
that one of its earliest, Lord Cornbury, is rumored to
have been a cross-dresser and was more than likely
gay?

Theatre
Askew’s grand production of Cornbury: The
Queen’s Governor will bring you up to speed.

Obie winner David
Greenspan plays the colonial governor with a knowing
and precise lilt while the Ridiculous Theatre
Company’s Everett Quinton brings a
larger-than-life outrageousness to Pastor Van Dam, who works
to oust the corrupt and cross-dressing governor. At
the pastor’s side in his campaign is Margareta
De Peyster, played with villainy supreme by
TransAmerica’s Bianca Leigh. Mark
Beard’s rich trompe l’oeil false
proscenium set, with its numerous drops and visible
fly system, offers the just right environment of
meta-tattiness.

“I felt
like I was guided towards doing this project,” says
director Tim Cusack. Several years ago Cusack directed
a reading of another play by writer William M. Hoffman
when a novelist friend mentioned some curious
information she had come across on a cross-dressing colonial
governor. A week later, Cusack says he was talking to
the playwright, “and I swear to God this is
true, Bill said to me, ‘Tim, I’ve written this
play about an early British governor who was a
cross-dresser and I think your company would be good
for it.’”