In a land where the whiskey is always flowing, an ambitious young painter is faced with a life-altering choice: Give up on her dreams and embrace a carefree life or lose her father, the powerful Mayor of Williamsburg. Will she leave behind the only family she’s ever known? Or will she discover that in Williamsburg, it’s easier to drink than to think? From the New York Innovative Theater Award-nominated team behind FATTY FATTY NO FRIENDS comes a new musical about hope, family, whiskey, and reconciling the dreamer within.

Whiskey Pants: The Mayor Williamsburg, a new musical directed and composed by Christian De Gre, is a remarkably silly new work, now up at the HERE Arts Center. And while some of the silliness leaves something to be desired, a lot of it is at the beating heart of Whiskey Pants, ultimately a very hardworking production. In this piece, we find ourselves in post “the event” Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the mayor is decided by an annual whiskey drinking contest and goes by Whiskey Pants. The current longstanding Whiskey Pants has a young daughter who wants more for her life, and a son who has returned to Williamsburg to see if there is any life for him here. Throughout the musical, an energetic ensemble helps tell the story and interacts with the spectators. Whiskey Pants is certainly stylized, with psycho-Wild West art and costume design. It would have been fun for the text to follow this path as well, but in general it stayed with the clear choice of explicating the character dynamics and story. Perhaps this went a little far, and we could’ve done with more of ‘what’s going on in this world?’ and less of ‘who was Mayor Whiskey Pants’ former wife?’.  The piece also seems to hint at cu …Read more