Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
A blizzard. A gun.* And a meeting of a volatile Brooklyn chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America during the administration of a corrupt ex-cop NYC mayor. What could go wrong? Chapter Meeting asks us to believe some things that don’t make sense. But a lot goes right in this world-premiere Perfect 10s production of the incisively written comedy. A spitfire cast is briskly directed by playwright Taylor Jon Gonzalez.
A Comic Microscope on the DSA
The story teeters between two visions of what a DSA chapter’s inner workings might look like, one plausible, the other satirical. (Note the winking exclamation point in the subtitle.) The latter strain skews the first act as we learn that getting a job – any regular salaried job – disqualifies one from DSA membership. Yet the real DSA seems to be laser-focused on success in politics, and what is a seat in Congress or the mayoralty of the nation’s largest city if not a job?
Another “Hey, wait a minute!” moment comes at the very end.
But the meat of the play is fleshy and well cooked. It’s found in the four characters, their consciences and conflicts, and how each of these very different people manifests the ideals of their activism.
They declare those ideals plainly in a fourth-wall-breaking vignette early in the action, a scene that cleverly fuses the sincere and the satirical. It also presents the four in a united front that begins to show its seams almost from the very start of the action.
The plays opens with Esther (a pinpoint-powerful Kelly Whitley) in her apartment in Brooklyn’s trendy Williamsburg neighborhood, at odds over politics via phone with her mother. At this point in her young, privileged life, Esther is what you could call a professional student.
The first to arrive for the meeting is Dee (Kiko Soirée in a grittily hilarious performance), a transgender influencer who lives off the largesse of her wealthy “fans” – which is to say, being “someone’s secret,” as she bitterly puts it later.
Confrontational provocateur Mar (Michelle Chan Bennett in a whirlwind performance) rockets in next, hyped up on a collision she’s just had with an NYPD officer. Her intensity contrasts immediately with Esther’s gentleness and Dee’s sexualized provocativeness.
Finally, aging-out skaterboi Andrew (Ihea Inyama) arrives, tormented by something he hates to have to tell his friends but must.
Democratic Socialists, Disunited
The blizzard having cut the meeting down to these four, they try to get through their agenda, much of it about planning for an upcoming protest. But internal conflict proves the order of the day, and not only because of Andrew’s news. Mar’s ideas don’t sit right with Dee. Ski masks? “I don’t think I have the right face shape.” Go dark on social media? “Okay, I totally hear you…but…I’m, like, an influencer.”
In a different way, Mar’s intensity feels too much for Esther too: Prepare for violence? “Okay, when The State falls, I’ll just die. It’s not a big deal. I’d rather do that than have to go be Rambo out there in the jungles of New Jersey. I’m not equipped for that life.”
As for Mar: Foster a cat? “I don’t have time for a small animal. I live life too close to the edge.” These exchanges play for laughs while also serving as the key to both comedy and drama: effective character development.
Andrew alone doesn’t get a revelatory Act II “big moment.” But Inyama builds his character effectively on the down-low, beginning with the inner turmoil of his solo turn hiding in the bathroom. (Soirée has a show-stealing solo scene of her own there too).
Throughout, Gonzalez focuses smartly, through a broad comic lens, on how human nature in general, and individual personalities and differences, make political movements so hard to sustain and even define.
Just as important, the production is a crackling good time in spite of a few plot flaws.
The printed program includes a message from the DSA’s NYC chapter. This apparent approval seems to indicate that the organization can appreciate a sense of humor like Gonzalez’s. His message seems to be: If we can’t laugh at ourselves, how can we effectively challenge corruption and tyranny when we must do it partly through laughing in its face?
Chapter Meeting runs through August 1, 2026 at the wild project. Tickets are available online.
*No spoiler, as the program gives a “gunshot sound” content warning.
