“Everybody needs a good setback in their life and gosh, 2024 did that for me.”
That was Rob Madge, speaking on video last month from their London home. A theater maker who identifies as nonbinary, Madge smiled wide into the camera and, wearing a crisp white guayabera-style shirt that was mostly buttoned, looked as if they were on their way to a “White Lotus” resort happy hour.
But Madge wasn’t talking about cocktails and island intrigue. They were recalling dashed Broadway dreams.
In February 2024, the Broadway run of Madge’s autobiographical show “My Son’s a Queer (but What Can You Do?)” was postponed just weeks before it was to begin preview performances at the Lyceum Theater. There was talk of opening on Broadway the following season, but that never materialized.
In a statement last month, the show’s producers, Tom Smedes and Heather Shields, said “the heartbreaking decision” to call off a Broadway run was because “the risks of launching and sustaining the production were simply too great” for the show’s “long-term health.”
Madge, 28, said having Broadway fall through prompted them to consider difficult and dueling questions, the likes of which plague any theater artist putting work into the world.
“Do I pack it in and say, ‘Nah, people clearly don’t want this story?,’” they said. “Or do I knock on some doors and prove to you why you need to hear this story?”
The knocking worked. Madge’s 70-minute production will make its U.S. debut at New York City Center in a five-performance-run from Thursday through Sunday, in time for Pride Month.
Directed by Luke Sheppard (“& Juliet”), “My Son’s a Queer” is a playful yet touching blend of storytelling and songs, accented with projected scenes from the “living room shows” that Madge performed as a kid, and now shares with their almost 236,000 TikTok followers.
Madge described the show as an antidote to tortured coming out stories of estrangement and banishment. It doesn’t shy away from examining queer trauma, but it does so from its reverse. Or as Madge put it: “What world could be possible if we raised our kids with unconditional love and support?”
“So often we look at our stories and we only see trauma and shame, and unfortunately that is the case for a lot of people,” they said. “But we’re not showing that there can be an alternative.”
“My Son’s a Queer” premiered four years ago at the Turbine Theater in London, then had a hit run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022. Two West End runs followed, and in 2023 it was nominated for an Olivier Award. The reviews were mostly positive, with critics calling it “richly comical” and a “joyous, life-affirming show.”
Originally a cabaret piece, it has turned into a full-fledged play, with original songs by Madge and the British composer Pippa Cleary. For its New York debut, it will have a live band.
Madge said they drew primarily from their memories of being raised in a family that encouraged them, an only child, to embrace their creative side and mount their “outrageous productions” in the family’s Birmingham home. The shows were recorded on VHS, and family members sometimes doubled as the crew.
“My poor dad would be stage manager and oftentimes the prince because I wanted to wear the wigs,” Madge said.
The living-room gigs lasted from age 4 to 14, Madge said, ending with a personal triumph for a young Disney fan: Playing Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” with projection mapping. Unlike other possibly queer kids in their neighborhood, Madge said their family built “a barricade” around them that kept their shame over sexual orientation and gender identity at bay.
“My family made sure that any external negatives were batted off like a force field,” they said. (Speaking of barricades: Professionally, Madge cut their theater teeth on “Les Misérables,” playing the waif Gavroche.)
As if making their American debut wasn’t taxing enough, this month Madge began playing the Emcee in “Cabaret” in the West End. Their New York stint is a whirlwind one: They’re taking time off to perform “My Son’s a Queer” stateside before returning to London to continue in “Cabaret” next Tuesday, with just a day to recover from jet lag.
“I’m a glutton for punishment,” Madge sighed.
“My Son’s a Queer” has taken on “a vitality that it never had before,” Madge said, noting that it is coming to the United States as L.G.B.T.Q. rights are at risk of being eroded.
“It feels urgent and needed, more so than just a sweet thing,” they said.
Not that there isn’t room for sweets. Madge said they hoped their show would act as a kind of call to arms for parents to do whatever it takes to make their queer kids happier sooner.
“I managed to accept myself and come to love what I do and who I am a lot quicker just because from the get-go, I was never told that I should try and be anything other than myself,” they said.
