The Wild Party
Playhouse on Park
West Hartford
July 22, 2026
I don’t recall ever seeing the cast for a play take their curtain call in their underwear before, but there’s a first time for everything.
I can scratch seeing cheeks at the theater off my bucket list thanks to The Wild Party, a raunchy, high-energy musical currently showing at Playhouse on Park.
The Wild Party’s plot is straightforward. Queenie (Mollie Downes) and Burrs (Trevor Bunce) are an unstable couple of vaudeville performers, tied together by their shared desires for sex, excitement and violence. After their initial meeting, their whirlwind romance begins to lose its luster once Burrs turns his violent, erratic nature against Queenie. She searches for something to reignite their passion, and decides on throwing a grand party. On the appointed evening, two of the invited guests, Mr. Black (Cory Simmons) and Kate (Maddi Bowman), draw the romantic attention of Queenie and Burrs. The night descends into a chaotic mess of lust, jealousy and drugs.
The Playhouse on Park production spared no expense, transforming the stage into a den of debauchery straight out of the Roaring '20s. While the setting for the play was the apartment of Queenie and Burrs, the production kept it dynamic with constantly moving furniture and props that reconfigured the stage on the fly. Whether the story called for a boxing ring, a stage within a stage or a makeshift bed, the staging was prepared.
Even more impressive were the choreography and energy of the show. The Wild Party (book, lyrics, and music by Andrew Lippa) is a sung-through musical, meaning that nearly every interaction throughout the nearly two-hour runtime (with no intermission) was a spectacle of song and dance. The main cast was supported by a company of performers who played guests at the party; each took their turn in the spotlight. Some of the humorous songs they performed were about a lesbian looking for love in all the wrong places, and two people describing how in love they are despite having met only the day before.
It was exciting to see such an elaborate performance so up close and personal. The Wild Party felt like a Broadway musical brought into the intimate space of Playhouse on Park. Speaking of intimate, it was a very sexual party as well. Tastefully obscured sex acts were rampant, along with all manner of suggestive song and dance that left little to the imagination. And yes, the entire cast ends up in their knickers by the end of the play. But I won’t spoil how they get there.
The show stealer for me was Maddi Bowman’s Kate. Both her voice and her stage presence were electrifying. I think she benefitted from Kate’s emotional reactions being more grounded than the other characters'. Where Queenie and Burrs come across as flighty and Mr. Black is struck dumb by love, Kate is the odd-woman out of what she was expecting would be a simple night of easy sex. Bowman wears that disappointment on her sleeve, and lets it inform her performance.
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Jamil goes to experience a concert in a cemetery.
