Theatre Review: Hir *

Hir is the name of the current play at Steppenwolf. Hir (pronounced here) is also a pronoun. It's not her, it's not him...it's hir. 

In an article in the Playbill, playwright Taylor Mac talks a lot about how there's more than one gender and how the world is changing and how our society is multi-sexual, and he tells us his personal pronoun is judy (I am not making that up), and that that is what this play is about. And I guess that's so, since he wrote it, but it seems less that to me and more about a family that is turning everything upside down in a really chaotic and repulsive way in order to fight against and obliterate the past.
The play opens on a living room/kitchen that is strewn with an immense amount of junk; on the counters, on the tables, on every available surface, piles of laundry on the floor, so much junk they can't use the front door.
"I don't do laundry any more!" the mother cries happily to her son, who's just home from the Marine Corps having been dishonorably discharged. "We don't believe in cupboards any more!"
Everything about this family and home has changed and not for the better, and it wasn't good to begin with.
There's the mother, and there's the father, who's wearing clown makeup and a fright wig, and it turns out he had a stroke and is barely with us except for grunts and inappropriate self-touching for which the mother squirts him with a spray bottle (which is a pretty funny bit because it's done so casually). And there's a sister who's no longer a sister but a transgender sibling.
And if that isn't enough Francis Guinan, who plays the father, walks around for much of the play in nothing but a diaper and, believe me, that’s not something you want to see.
I'm not sure why I stayed for the second act. It was kind of like a really gruesome accident - you want to leave but you can’t drag your eyes away.
Hir is certainly provocative, and that’s a good thing in theatre. Maybe I loved it, but I think I hated it. Good performances, tho.
Here's a video of the playwright talking about this play, and this may make you want to see it. But be warned.
One star out of five for Hir.