Pearl Necklace: A Gay Sexcapade
Written and Performed by Jamie Brickhouse
wild project | 195 East 3rd Street, New York, NY 10009
November 11 and November 15, 2025
Early in the solo confection titled Pearl Necklace: A Gay Sexcapade, writer–performer Jamie Brickhouse, with the practiced archness of a raconteur who knows exactly how many layers of irony he has piled onto his own persona, notes that both title and subtitle serve as a kind of auto-generated trigger warning—an amuse-bouche of camp before the main course of confession. Yet by the time this funny, forthright, and unexpectedly affecting monologue glides to its close, the titular “pearl necklace” has metamorphosed into something far more intricately strung: an emblem of a life co-authored with another person and, simultaneously, a steadfast refusal to bend one’s erotic compass toward the north star of monogamy as ordained by heteronormative orthodoxy—jargon the piece knowingly teases even as it deploys it.
Recently presented as part of the 14th annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks and wild project, after a prior engagement in the 2024 Queerly Festival—FRIGID New York’s yearly celebration of queer theatremakers, curated by Co-Artistic Director Jimmy Lovett—the show situates itself within a decade-strong tradition of giving LGBTQ+ artists both the space and the latitude to speak in their own fabulously varied registers.
Brickhouse himself is a practiced virtuoso of the anecdotal aria, an award-winning writer and storyteller who traverses stages, streaming platforms, and social media landscapes with equal ease. “And to put you at ease, there won’t be full frontal nudity in this show. You’re welcome.” Pearl Necklace showcases this facility in abundance: his tales arrive adorned with the kind of sensory detail that feels less remembered than freshly unearthed, as if we were witnessing the spontaneous archaeology of a life. A pandemic-era wedding (via Zoom, so they’re only wearing non-matching tuxedo blazers and no bottoms) to his longtime partner functions as the elegant clasp that fastens these narrative beads, allowing Brickhouse to wander across four decades of erotic misadventure and personal formation.
We begin in 1982, in the conservative crucible of a small Texas town, “finding my tribe in the -big surprise- drama department!” Then leap through time and geography—from the local library (where Brickhouse’s youthful discovery of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour inadvertently conjures our present national mania for purging queer texts from shelves) to collegiate hallways, to the sylvan anonymity of Central Park, and on to the sun-drunk expanses of Fire Island.
It is in one such cruising encounter—unexpectedly tender, unexpectedly human—that the show’s tonal alchemy becomes clearest…meeting Michael, his partner, in the Rambles in NYC, the Grindr of its day. Brickhouse traffics in hilarity, yes, but he seasons it with an undercurrent of warmth that borders on the elegiac. Whether unpacking the delicate art of asking for precisely what one desires, meditating on the irrational sting (and perverse utility) of rejection, or acknowledging the phantom tingle of long-lost lovers, he constructs a mosaic of queer experience that feels both deeply personal and historically resonant.
Though Pearl Necklace is hardly a soapbox, politics nonetheless seep in: the tensions between the couple’s values and the institution of marriage, the generational shift from a Gen-X vision of queer liberation as resistance to the state’s normative machinery (marriage, the military, the whole panoply of straight-coded rites) toward a more assimilationist homonormativity. “One of the gifts of being gay was that we were off the hook. No military, no marriage, and no spawn.” The show glances at these themes with wry intelligence, refusing both didacticism and naïveté.
In staging terms, Brickhouse employs props and costume flourishes with admirable restraint—each small object, each sartorial tweak deployed with the precision of an actor who understands that minimalism, when wielded knowingly, can feel luxuriant. As he strings together his memories—boyfriends and lovers, phys-ed humiliations (in his Senior year, the administration realizes he needs one more semester of PE, so he becomes an unofficial coach and just like his former crush who was quietly removed from the campus permanently, Jamie gets assigned towel boy duty…as he admits, Talk about the fox guarding the chicken coop.) and digital-era hookups—he crafts a work of recollection that suggests the kind of interior audit one might undertake before entering wedlock. Nothing better exemplifies distracting niche sex like fellating a man who is in an EBAY auction to buy a rare 1910 British stamp.The conclusion Jamie lands upon is refreshingly defiant: marriage, if one chooses it, should be bent to one’s desires and moral architecture, not the reverse. “Marriage: for cis-gendered, hetero-normative people who identify as men and women, many of whom believe in monogamy.”
Pearl Necklace: A Gay Sexcapade is a gleaming strand of stories—salty, sparkling, unabashedly candid—and oh, so romantic. Dan the pianist serenades them from the classic “September Song”...And these few precious days, I’ll spend with you. And in their favorite sushi restaurant, “We order the usual - two appetizers and two special rolls - like the old married couple we are.” Brickhouse’s play is a touching must-see and deserves not to be the one that slipped through your fingers. Catch it the next time around.
Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on December 1, 2025 All rights reserved.