urban excavations

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God, Whoever Reads This First
Featuring Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland
SoHo Playhouse
June 4, 2025 – June 29, 2025
production site

SoHo Playhouse is a storied venue that currently houses solo shows and fully-staged productions, from barely staged standup acts to wonders featuring luminaries such as Charles Busch in one of his wise romps or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag when it traveled to the U.S. for a spin. Somewhere in between, and an entrancing introduction to New York audiences, is the writing and producing duo Xhloe and Natasha who have made a splash at the Edinburgh Fringe for several years and have now brought their observant physicality to the tiny SoHo Rep stage.

While the house is small, the stage is smaller, and some of us are invited to ring the playing space (chairs surrounding the center stage) to be part of the action, almost touching the tumbling and stretching performers during their intermission-less adventure.

The memory play, almost danced but truly athletically choreographed as young gender-free kids cavorting in a woodland (I imagined), spans the Vietnam War where Ace (Roland) and Grasshopper (Rice) begin as pre-adolescent kids playing soldier. These boys grow into young men serving their country, applying the lessons the young lads we first encounter dream up: what is allowed to say and to feel and to be? As young men going off to war they repeat to each other and to us the lessons they have learned: keep your promises, serving as a soldier is the best role ever, watch any expression of closeness to another man (homophobia reigns in the world these boy have taught themselves).

The play’s movement is both energized and languid, following the lithe maneuvering of the two performing creatives. The soundscape rings true to this Boomer’s ears (I lived the era they portray at about the ages of the characters, from child to young adult), including being moved to tears by music of the Beatles performed on harmonicas and over the sound system.

The expressly male characters, portrayed by the gender fluid performers Xhloe and Natasha, underscore a primary question in this story of boys-as-men marching off to war: what makes a man, or better said, what makes a warrior? If you dress like a man, talk like a man, follow the rules (whether created or handed down), does your performance of gender meet the mark?

On this bare stage (save the chairs seating some audience members) with its one abandoned tire prop (that illustrates both refuse and a play toy that one or the other boy rolls in from time to time), a world is created that is both part of the distant past and very much our present day. We can ask what makes a man or a woman or a nonbinary person. And we can ask: what does gender matter at all?

© Martha Wade Steketee (June 15, 2025)

Written and Performed by | Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland
Lighting and Technical Management | Angelo Sagnelli