NEW YORK — You probably remember the photo. The one of a royal toddler glancing over his shoulder with absent-minded delight, hands delicately framing his chin like a model in a cosmetics ad. Prince George was just 4 years old in 2017 when the picture caused a sensation — among gays who gleefully branded him an icon, and others who didn’t exactly consider that a badge of honor.
Playwright Jordan Tannahill’s “Prince Faggot,” now running at Studio Seaview, takes that photo as a provocative jumping-off point — to imagine if the heir to the British throne grew up to be a “chaotic bottom.” (The play’s title can be considered both a slur and a reclaimed term of endearment.) Let’s set aside the question of whether the royals are over-scrutinized at any age (probably), and of how the prince might actually identify (none of our business). For queer people, playful images like these can serve as touchstones that we exist on “an unbroken continuum of being,” as one character puts it, looking at a sassy picture of himself at George’s age.
Most of us have a photo of ourselves that proves we have always been exactly who we are. (Mine is proudly framed on my mantel.) The cast of “Prince Faggot,” addressing the audience out of character, shares their snapshots with some version of the sentiment, “Honey, will you look at this adorable little queen?” The show is one of several off-Broadway this fall about what happens to that innocence when children face a world that’s increasingly hostile to their identities.
In “Saturday Church,” a vibrant new musical with a score by Sia, a teenager whose faith is at odds with his flamboyance breaks down in song, asking, “Can anybody see me?” Dylan Mulvaney, who chronicled her transition online and was engulfed in controversy over a beer endorsement, explores how such visibility can be a trap in her dizzyingly funny solo show, “The Least Problematic Woman in the World.” And Preston Max Allen’s “Caroline” offers a rare glimpse at a transgender character of just 9 years old and how adults do (and don’t) step up to ease her tricky path forward.
There’s a brashness to these shows that flies in the face of rising taboos about the existence of queer kids, at a time when government policies refuse to acknowledge their need for protection and their right to thrive. As references to LGBTQ+ identity are scrubbed from schools and gender transition care grows more scarce, stories like these play a vital civic role: to show audiences that queer youths aren’t going to stop defeating the odds and coming of age, no matter the gauntlets thrown in their way.
Hounding by the paparazzi notwithstanding, the title character in “Prince Faggot,” which runs through Nov. 30, enjoys more privileges than perhaps any queer person on Earth. After a sex scene between George (John McCrea) and his university boyfriend (Mihir Kumar), Rachel Crowl, who plays Catherine, Princess of Wales, steps forward to address the audience. (In an ongoing conceit, the actors appear to break character and speak as themselves, but the script notes that most of these monologues are fictional.) Crowl, who is trans, describes feeling resentful that she was “denied the experience of being a trans girl,” of having first loves as other teenagers do, like George in the previous scene. He “will never know that wound,” she says. Observations like these lend the play its layered poignancy, pointing out how race, class and gender identity shaped the lives that lay ahead for the kids in the photos.
The prince is fortunate to have supportive parents in Prince William and Catherine — another of the play’s speculative fantasies — but his divine duty to the Church of England is another potential conflict that goes largely unexamined. In “Saturday Church,” at New York Theatre Workshop through Oct. 24, poor Ulysses (Bryson Battle) just wants to sing in the choir, but his stiff-backed aunt (Joaquina Kalukango) insists that he’s “too much” and would embarrass her on the altar. (A disclosure that I’m friends with Damon Cardasis, who conceived and co-wrote the musical and made the 2017 film it’s based on.)
Ulysses exceeds boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable in church, at home and even on the street, which leads him into the arms of a chosen family in the ballroom scene. (He is helped along the way by Black Jesus, a fairy-godmother type played with wry sass by J. Harrison Ghee.) The heartfelt sincerity that pulses through the show — which also has its share of high-energy catwalking and fan-clacking — is rooted in a wrenching curiosity: “Why am I so wrong?” Ulysses sings. “Why can’t I belong?”
The musical follows Ulysses on a voyage, similar to his literary namesake’s, that leads back home to himself. Hanging on to his faith is key — in Black Jesus, sure, but also in the integrity of his own desires: He doesn’t need to change who he is. Others need to learn how to embrace him.
The journey to becoming Dylan Mulvaney involved significant changes that she continues to broadcast in “The Least Problematic Woman in the World,” a sharply comedic and cotton-candy-pink confessional, running at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through Oct. 19. Mulvaney rose to online prominence by posting honest reflections about her transition, framing the process as one of adolescence in a series she titled “Days of Girlhood.” By documenting logistics — hormone treatments, side effects, insecurities — Mulvaney publicly legitimized trans identity by making the process visible.
As she explores onstage, the resulting fame put Mulvaney in the impossible position of spokeswoman for “trans palatability,” striving to be relatable so people wouldn’t think that she — and, by extension, all trans people — was a monster. (In 2023, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene inexplicably called Mulvaney “one of the biggest pedophiles in America today.”) The most captivating part of the show is getting a sense of Mulvaney when she was a kid trying to figure out an acceptable way to navigate life. A doctor prescribes Mulvaney a bottle labeled “twink” to assure her mother that there’s an easy path forward for her feminine son. Later, Mulvaney mordantly refers to transitioning as “twink death.”
Maddie, the mom played by Chloë Grace Moretz in “Caroline,” is far more supportive. In Allen’s bracing and tender family drama, she and her 9-year-old daughter (the title character played by River Lipe-Smith) have left Maddie’s abusive ex-boyfriend to seek help from her parents. Caroline’s needs as a trans girl — for medical care and accommodating schools — are more than Maddie feels she can handle alone. In returning to her own mother (Amy Landecker), Maddie reopens wounds over her past behavior as a troubled kid. Caroline’s transness isn’t incidental, but the play is more concerned with how parents love and protect their children — falling short despite their best intentions — and with the promise and pitfalls of second chances.
“Caroline” refreshingly does not dispute the integrity of queer identity, even at a young age, but rather asks how families can unite around those who need them the most. In a perfect world, isn’t that how society is supposed to work?
Prince Faggot, through Nov. 30 at Studio Seaview in New York. About 2 hours without an intermission. studioseaview.com.
Saturday Church, through Oct. 24 at New York Theatre Workshop in New York. About 2 hours 20 minutes with an intermission. nytw.org.
