A queer retelling of the life and love of one of history’s most scandalous kings makes its World Premiere in London this October.
The Mad Gay King by Christopher Adams-Cohen will open at King’s Head Theatre in London this Autumn. Directed by West End director Scott Le Crass (‘Rose’, Ambassadors Theatre) & produced by LA producer Amanda Schulz (‘The Rehearsal’, HBO), the play will mark LA playwright Christopher Adams-Cohen’s UK theatrical debut.
Originally written for Adams-Cohen’s MA thesis at Goldsmiths, University of London, the play has since been developed at London’s Soho Theatre and Omnibus Theatre, and is currently in consideration for inclusion in the 2024 Ojai Playwright’s Conference.
Ahead of the run at London's King's Head Theatre we spoke with playwright Christopher Adams-Cohen to learn more about the piece.
What can you tell me about the piece?
The Mad Gay King is a queer retelling of the life and love of Ludwig II of Bavaria, an infamously decadent 19th century monarch who was forcibly deposed by his conservative government on the grounds of homosexual insanity. Ludwig is probably most historically well-known for draining his country’s coffers to build a series of over-the-top fairy tale castles, and for funding the career (and increasingly extra lifestyle) of opera composer Richard Wagner. It’s not a huge surprise his government had a vested interest in ousting him.
The Mad Gay King is a queer retelling of the life and love of Ludwig II of Bavaria, an infamously decadent 19th century monarch who was forcibly deposed by his conservative government on the grounds of homosexual insanity. Ludwig is probably most historically well-known for draining his country’s coffers to build a series of over-the-top fairy tale castles, and for funding the career (and increasingly extra lifestyle) of opera composer Richard Wagner. It’s not a huge surprise his government had a vested interest in ousting him.
At the time, they were able to keep his homosexuality out of his official diagnosis, but in recent years it’s become clear the lion’s share of their evidence was a trove of too-hot-for-the-presses homosexual liaisons. He didn’t even need to be examined in person for the doctors to make their verdict that he was gay, AKA mentally ill by the era’s standards. Honestly, I’d like to get my hands on some of those reports, they must’ve been pretty steamy . . .
Where did the idea for the piece come from?
The seed of the idea was planted on my first ever visit to Ludwig’s most famous castle, Neuschwanstein: a neo-Medieval, high-camp fantasy palace perched amongst the South German alps. The built-in stage set in the king’s dressing room—designed for private performances of Wagner’s ‘Tristan & Isolde’—was enough to pique my interest that we might be kindred souls. . . but it was when I found out about the mystery still surrounding his own quite operatic death—and the rumours of his sexuality swirling around it—that I knew there was a play here.
The seed of the idea was planted on my first ever visit to Ludwig’s most famous castle, Neuschwanstein: a neo-Medieval, high-camp fantasy palace perched amongst the South German alps. The built-in stage set in the king’s dressing room—designed for private performances of Wagner’s ‘Tristan & Isolde’—was enough to pique my interest that we might be kindred souls. . . but it was when I found out about the mystery still surrounding his own quite operatic death—and the rumours of his sexuality swirling around it—that I knew there was a play here.
I like to call it a ‘retelling’ because it’s more than just a recounting of history. My interest is also in the way that we, as LGBTQ+ people, mythologise the stories of our queer forebears. The deeper I got into Ludwig’s story, the more interested I became in the little pockets of the internet where contemporary queer people were making a hero out of him, and passing around his apocryphal love letters. The play is based on history, yes, but it’s also interested in the way we claim and tell our own stories through a modern prism.
That’s why the play is framed through memory. It opens a year after the king’s mysterious death, when his mourning lover, stable master Richard Hornig, returns to the spot where Ludwig’s body was found at the shore of Lake Starnberg. There, Richard relives their romance, with a big-R Romantic flare. I’m interested in how, today, we engage with LGBTQ+ historical figures like Ludwig, who used fantasy to survive—but for whom fantasy was also a way to retreat and isolate themselves from the world. I think that’s what Richard is reckoning with as he tries to understand what of Ludwig’s story to carry with him - and what must be left behind.
What research did you have to do whilst developing the piece?
Simultaneously way too much and none at all! Of course, I got very into the historical research, and every detail of the play is informed by hours of deep dive into history, literature, Romantic-era art, and even a pilgrimage to the rest of Ludwig’s castles.
But at a certain point, you have to let go of the research and trust it’s there. Most important became locating the core of Richard and Ludwig’s story. And whenever I found myself overthinking things, or going back too often to my notes, I pushed myself to find a personal connection instead. To say something from the heart.
Like Ludwig, I find the incompatibility of romance, magic, mystery in the modern world unbearably painful. Like Richard, I am enraged at the repressive confines that keep queer people at the service of old-fashioned, established hierarchies of power.
When in doubt, I also always try to remember the other reason I started writing this play: to write the kind of (mad) gay love story I wish I could’ve seen when I was a kid. In all its thorniness and tenderness and campy DIY-magic and epic excess.
How have you found the collaborative process of watching the show come to life and to the stage?
It’s been remarkable! I met my producer, Amanda Schulz, a year ago in LA (my hometown), and was immediately intrigued to discover she was a TV producer with dreams of making theatre in London. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I figured she was humouring me, but then she asked to read some of my plays, and within a week she was putting up a reading of The Mad Gay King in the garden of her dreamy little Victorian home in Highland Park. I knew then we were a match in sensibility with an equally palpable flare for the fantastic.
It’s been remarkable! I met my producer, Amanda Schulz, a year ago in LA (my hometown), and was immediately intrigued to discover she was a TV producer with dreams of making theatre in London. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I figured she was humouring me, but then she asked to read some of my plays, and within a week she was putting up a reading of The Mad Gay King in the garden of her dreamy little Victorian home in Highland Park. I knew then we were a match in sensibility with an equally palpable flare for the fantastic.
Director Scott Le Crass and I immediately shared a similar vision for the play that was intimate yet epic, historically informed yet guttural and immediate. I’d seen his work before and loved the way he handled drama with a precise sense of musicality and rhythm, and got such honest performances out of his actors. Watching him run auditions really solidified for me he was the right artist to handle this material, as he gracefully coaxed performances out each actor that showed me things I’d never fully understood before about the characters.
Things really started to come together when J Aria came on board as composer. I knew my nightmare scenario was that the play would be scored with Wagner. Of course, Wagner’s operas were central to Ludwig’s life, but for modern audiences, there’s just such a different connotation with his operas that’s a bit familiar and bloated and problematic. J Aria is a legendary East London underground queer music producer, and their music pulses with life, sensuality, emotion. Riffing off Wagner’s famous leitmotifs, J has found a way to help the audience understand the emotion at the core of Ludwig’s obsession with the composer—and to tap into the historical fact that, at the time, no one in Munich wanted to hear Wagner’s music. It was too avant-garde, too erotic. It’s another example of Ludwig being ahead of his time, and J helps to modernise that and make it felt in the design.
I’ve also been very lucky, from the very start, to have my fabulous dramaturg Patty Kim Hamilton by my side, in my ear, cleaved to my heart. Last year, when she won the RSC’s ‘27 Plays’ with her play RE: Jane Doe, she invited me to be her dramaturg for their big reading at York Theatre Royal. And now she’s here supporting me and my play as it comes to life. As I meet all these new fantastically inspiring collaborators, it’s incredibly grounding to have someone on the team who I’ve known and worked with for years.
This marks your UK debut, do you have to approach anything differently for a British audience?
I’m not sure I’ve catered my approach to suit a British audience, but the year I spent immersing myself in British plays has certainly informed and inspired me as a writer! I came here to do my MA at Goldsmiths in September 2022, and threw myself into seeing 2 to 3 plays a week to get a sense for contemporary British theatre. What really struck me was how much imagination could be evoked on an intimate stage, with one to four actors, and how resourcefully a scene could be painted with words. The tradition of pub and fringe theatre is so strong in the UK, and I loved the idea of writing an incredibly epic play that still felt intimate and immediate. I was inspired at the idea of letting the decorative opulence of Ludwig’s world live in the language, and leaving things quite bare and open so that the play could move really athletically through time and space, between physical and emotional worlds.
I’m not sure I’ve catered my approach to suit a British audience, but the year I spent immersing myself in British plays has certainly informed and inspired me as a writer! I came here to do my MA at Goldsmiths in September 2022, and threw myself into seeing 2 to 3 plays a week to get a sense for contemporary British theatre. What really struck me was how much imagination could be evoked on an intimate stage, with one to four actors, and how resourcefully a scene could be painted with words. The tradition of pub and fringe theatre is so strong in the UK, and I loved the idea of writing an incredibly epic play that still felt intimate and immediate. I was inspired at the idea of letting the decorative opulence of Ludwig’s world live in the language, and leaving things quite bare and open so that the play could move really athletically through time and space, between physical and emotional worlds.
If you could travel back to the time of the piece, how do you think you would have gotten on?
I love the 19th-century silhouettes, so I imagine my outfits would’ve been terribly chic! But I’m not so sure how well I’d get on with all the artistic and sexual repression of the era. As hot as it sounds, in theory, to attend secret gay parties in boarding houses in 1860s Bavaria, I’d definitely have been considered certifiably insane by the standards of the time.
I love the 19th-century silhouettes, so I imagine my outfits would’ve been terribly chic! But I’m not so sure how well I’d get on with all the artistic and sexual repression of the era. As hot as it sounds, in theory, to attend secret gay parties in boarding houses in 1860s Bavaria, I’d definitely have been considered certifiably insane by the standards of the time.
Then there’s the matter of my being Jewish. My ancestors on my father’s side were actually Bavarian Jews, and would’ve been there around this time. Jews in Bavaria faced pretty intensely ingrained antisemitism—including from Richard Wagner, who is a character in the play. That said, It was pretty fabulous during my research to come across a letter from Ludwig to Wagner, in which the king refuses to let the composer fire a Jewish conductor on grounds of his race and religion. I guess Ludwig was ahead of his time on several fronts.
When did you know that you wanted to be a writer and how did you approach doing so?
For me, writing was initially an act of pure chutzpah. I was a hungry drama school student in LA who couldn’t find any juicy, complex, thorny queer roles or stories I’d be interested in playing or directing or quite frankly sitting to watch. So I thought: I guess I’ll try my hand at writing something instead. In fact, it was reading a modern British play, Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping & Fucking – picked out at random from some far corner of the UCLA library — that gave me the balls to actually try it. I read that and thought, “plays can be like this?” And that was the start of it. So anytime I write something, I’m thinking: what role would be thrilling for a queer actor to play? What could a hopelessly romantic aesthete of a director sink their teeth into? What is actually going to turn an audience on?
For me, writing was initially an act of pure chutzpah. I was a hungry drama school student in LA who couldn’t find any juicy, complex, thorny queer roles or stories I’d be interested in playing or directing or quite frankly sitting to watch. So I thought: I guess I’ll try my hand at writing something instead. In fact, it was reading a modern British play, Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping & Fucking – picked out at random from some far corner of the UCLA library — that gave me the balls to actually try it. I read that and thought, “plays can be like this?” And that was the start of it. So anytime I write something, I’m thinking: what role would be thrilling for a queer actor to play? What could a hopelessly romantic aesthete of a director sink their teeth into? What is actually going to turn an audience on?
What keeps you inspired?
Gorgeous prints of books by dead gay authors, long quiet dark hours of solitude, the V&A, the Prado, Lana Del Rey, Los Angeles, my fabulous mother Antoinette Adams, juicy gossip from past eras, going to Synagogue, living in Europe, being surrounded by people I genuinely respect and admire, ‘The Artist’s Way,’ delusional ambition, discreet sexual encounters, mid-century vintage menswear, romantic gestures, having my friends’ books on my shelf, having my friends’ paintings on my walls.
What do you hope an audience member takes away from seeing the show?
In addition to getting some insight into a fabulously scandalous historical figure, I hope audiences also find a personal connection to the contemporary story centered within the play. I was sitting on the train recently and saw these two teenage boys holding hands. I thought that was kind of amazing, so I think this play should be for them. I’m not promising them a love story that will last forever, or have a fairy tale ending, or even look like anything they’ve been told love should look like. But at least I’d want them to see this and know they can model something for themselves, that they can make a new world. Be it messy, epic, tender, or rough. As long as it’s theirs.
In addition to getting some insight into a fabulously scandalous historical figure, I hope audiences also find a personal connection to the contemporary story centered within the play. I was sitting on the train recently and saw these two teenage boys holding hands. I thought that was kind of amazing, so I think this play should be for them. I’m not promising them a love story that will last forever, or have a fairy tale ending, or even look like anything they’ve been told love should look like. But at least I’d want them to see this and know they can model something for themselves, that they can make a new world. Be it messy, epic, tender, or rough. As long as it’s theirs.
Where can audiences see the show?
We run from 3rd-18th October at King’s Head Theatre in Islington! In keeping with the intimate nature of the show, we’re in the Late Night slot at 9PM. So bring a hot date. Or come ready to meet one . . .
We run from 3rd-18th October at King’s Head Theatre in Islington! In keeping with the intimate nature of the show, we’re in the Late Night slot at 9PM. So bring a hot date. Or come ready to meet one . . .
Tickets for The Mad Gay King are available from https://kingsheadtheatre.com/
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