Review: On the Evolutionary Function of Shame, a Reactionary Queer Fable

We seem to be approaching a milestone in human advancement. Like the creation of fire or the harnessing of electricity, we are about to assume a power previously reserved to God: the ability to design the genes of our children. That is the inevitability driving the drama in D.A. Mindell’s On the Evolutionary Function of Shame, now making its world premiere with Second Stage Theatre at the company’s new off-Broadway home. A play about cutting edge science, its overtly religious themes make perfect sense upon reflection.

Mindell frames the story with scenes of Adam (Jordan Barbour) and Eve (Elizabeth Ramos). In the opening moments they struggle to cover their nakedness and panic about life after Eden. Flash forward Millennia and we see the latest developments in their decision to eat of the fruit of knowledge.

Adam 2 (Cody Sloan), a trans man, is pregnant with the child of his partner, Fox (Ryan Jamaal Swain). Eve 2 (Kayli Carter), Adam 2’s twin sister, performs the ultrasound. “I knew it would piss her off if we still had matching names,” he confesses, offering us our first whiff of the impulse for emotional abuse that drives this character.

While not actually a practicing OB-GYN, Eve 2 works at the world’s preeminent institute for genetic engineering (the insurance implications of this out-of-network choice are never addressed). She feels compelled to shepherd Adam 2’s pregnancy to a healthy delivery following an earlier miscarriage.

But Eve 2 has also made a major breakthrough in her research. She has discovered the genetic marker for gender dysphoria and is about to publish her findings in a major scientific journal. Adam is furious when he finds out, reasoning that this will be the beginning of the end for trans people as parents decide en masse to edit this gene. He orders her not to publish and threatens to end their relationship if she disobeys.

As musty as the form has become, the nice thing about the 90-minute issue play is that even if the premise is contrived, the characters two-dimensional, the comic relief dull, and the production shoddy—all true about Shame—you’ll still have plenty of questions to debate on the ride home. Is “Born This Way” just a queer serenity prayer to help us accept the things we cannot change…until the day we can? Has not the trans movement, with its emphasis on chemical and surgical interventions as means to self-actualization, played a role in rendering that slogan obsolete? Can any ideological movement successfully stand athwart history and make it stop? And most distressingly, is the ability to guide and accelerate our own evolution the only thing that will give us a fighting chance against the rise of the machines happening up the block?

To Mindell’s credit, he gives these problematic perspectives a powerful advocate in the form of Eve 2’s research partner Margot (Imani Russell, with no-nonsense clarity). Margot is autistic, which, like being trans, has recently made the leap from medical condition to political identity. When Adam 2 asks Margot if she would want her autism “cured,” she unflinchingly responds, “I might. Plenty of people would. I’m fine with who I am, but it’s also undeniable that the world only became truly accessible to me when I entered a specific tax bracket.” In a capitalist society where gene editing is much cheaper than hormone therapy and surgery, the market’s eventual choice seems obvious — not that I’m at all convinced we in the real world will ever actually discover a gene for gender dysphoria.

But if anyone can stop the wheels of technological progress in this transparently fake world, it’s Adam 2, especially given an energetic and thoroughly obnoxious portrayal by Sloan, who luxuriates in this character’s overlapping neuroses. Sloan has real relationship vibes with Swain, who impressively brings genuine emotional contours to his obligatory monologue. Together they feel like the kids of Louis and Belize from Angels in America, improbably partnered in a Hallmark movie over their parents’ strenuous objections. But that’s children for you—full of surprises. “Once you create something, it’s not yours anymore,” the original Eve says to the original Adam as they bury their second son, murdered by their eldest. No truer line is spoken.

I doubt any director could fully salvage this dissertation disguised as drama, but Jess McLeod’s production makes it that much worse. You-Shin Chen’s set seems designed for a stage a third of this size, like a touring production that has found itself playing in a 3,000-seat barn. While Eve 2’s clinic is given a realistic rendering center stage, the other scenes are relegated to the unfurnished margins. Stagehands spill sand from plastic buckets that read “desert” to affect Adam and Eve’s time in the wilderness. The sight gag doesn’t begin to justify the mess (I suspect they’ll be sweeping grains out of crevices of the Irene Diamond Stage for years).

The lighting (by Barbara Samuels and Keith Parham) competently undergirds the time shifts and compensates somewhat for the set, as does Bailey Trierweiler’s sound. And Hahnji Jang’s costumes give us a taste of the adult-sized OshKosh B’gosh favored by our parents-to-be, insufferable hipsters whose insatiable narcissism is the most compelling reason why they shouldn’t be raising children.

But they wouldn’t be the first, nor will they be the last as new technology empowers the rich to design their babies as they might a custom handbag. In the face of such consumerist splendor, the LGBTQ movement and its not-so-secret weapon of emotional blackmail is powerless. Rather than a prescient vision of things to come, I fear Shame is an instant relic of a queer religion that, like fundamentalist Christianity before it, is poised to evolve into a reactionary movement.