We sat down with David Levesley, creator and one of the four writers on These Gays!…, and Charles Quittner, Brooklyn Rep UK creative director & creator/director. These two creative beings are part of the creative team presenting a queer imagining of the inevitable Reykjavik-based fifth season of The White Lotus this Twixmas – starring Björk, of course. These Gays! They’re Trying To… is performing in the basement of Dalston gay bar The Divine from 27 – 30 December and 2 – 4 January. Tickets here!

1. So, wellness trends, cults, and Björk in one show—did you just spin a chaotic queer wheel of fortune, or was there a method to this madness?

David Levesley: Our main focus was we wanted to make an alternative Christmas show for homosexuals and their friends who like everything Brooklyn Rep does best: theatre that feels like nightlife, that could only be done in a queer bar basement, that needs the audience to lean in. Charles and I really love work that’s queer, pop culture fluent and mixes high and low. After he (correctly) told me we’d never get the rights to do ‘The Great Bratsby’ we thought – what’s a camp classic? The White Lotus, obviously. What’s camp about it? The way gays turn it, and pop culture, into their whole personality. Where’s a festive place for The White Lotus to go to? Iceland, duh. What would you do at an Icelandic luxury hotel? Eat, clean, listen to Vulnicura front to back, and maybe burn someone alive in a wicker man. From there the show wrote itself.

Charles Quittner: We got an all star stable of writers who were inspired by current wellness fads and spun out from there. reid loves a scary LED face mask, Colin loves a 105k krona nightingale poop facial, Nate, a sensible Icelandic sea salt colonic. 

2. Given Lindsay Lohan’s White Lotus Reykjavik fate, can we expect more of a “mean girl” survivalist queen or “confessions of a lost wellness seeker”?

CQ: First and foremost priority,  this LiLo role hopes to win her an Emmy: she’s going to do it all! I would put her more in the Lola category: ambitious, delusional, lost but glamorously primed to take this odd world she finds herself forced into, but our LiLo character wants to perhaps leave behind these early career archetypes behind to usurp Amy Adams’s prestige American red head status and hopefully deliver a finale worthy of the queen that brought us Liza Rocks! 

DL: What’s interesting about LiLo is we’re now well enough away from her most iconic acting era that, truly, we do not know what sort of performance she’d sign on to do in a prestige TV drama. There are parts about the role that feel very on the nose, but also it’s something you’ve not seen from her before. Whether that’s good or not is up to the academy to decide.

3. With a cast featuring a thereminist, a sawist, and a milkman drag king, what’s the most “WTF but it totally works” moment we can expect on stage?

DL: There’s a few very good candidates. Someone dressed as Boudicca in a sound bath? An incredibly elaborate dildo in a steam room? That’s theatre, mama. Strindberg could never. We’re also creating a framework for how we talk about this fictitious season and, honestly? I think that’s where you’re going to have your breath taken away.

CQ: I’m excited for that very special dildo moment 

4. If Björk suddenly walked into the basement mid-performance, do you think she’d join the cult, start a soundbath, or lead everyone in an experimental Eurovision number?

DL: So I would like to say that I am Björk’s biggest fan and that, also, I didn’t suggest Iceland for this. But as soon as it became clear as a team we were doing Reykyavik? Well. Obviously Björk was there. Also it feels camp for the show so obsessed with stunt casting to have people actually play themselves? Chic, actually. I’ve been a fag in London and New York for long enough to know that Bjork is very adjacent to my life of poppers, drag race viewing parties and experimental DJ sets in unsuitable living rooms – I truly think if she saw this show she’d executive produce the film version, I think it would speak to her in ways you and I couldn’t even imagine. Either that, or she sues me for libel. It’s like playing your fave celeb for snatch game – you just don’t know if love makes good art or not.

CQ: can attest to David being Björk’s biggest fan (ask him about his stunning ready to go jukebox musical). Having famously seen Björk DJ Britney’s biggest hits at The Rosemont (a small gay bar in Brooklyn), I have no doubt she’d get right into our  spirit usurping our tech operator leading all in a spirited mix: and the invitation is open gurl.

DL: If I hear that Rosemont anecdote one more goddamn time.

CQ: It’s the only thing I have in this world. Please let me show you a picture…

5. You describe this as a “rollicking colonic” post-Christmas—so should we bring our own towels, or will Dairy King have us covered?

DL: Bring your towels, bring your swimsuits, bring your silliest friends and enough of your Christmas money for a few bottles of prosecco. If people aren’t dry-heaving with laughter by the curtain, I’ll get an enema on stage. 

CQ: He’ll do it! And I don’t think Dairy King knows much about towels but Alice might! I’m chuffed to watch her mop up that stage every night.