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Log Cabin
It's a faraway age of hope and inclusivity; in other words, it’s 2015. When a tight-knit circle of married gays and lesbians – comfy in the new mainstream – sees themselves through the eyes of their rakish transgender pal, it’s clear that the march toward progress is anything but unified. With stinging satire and acute compassion, Jordan Harrison’s pointed comedy charts the breakdown of empathy that happens when we think our rights are secure, revealing conservative hearts where you’d least expect.
- GenresPlays
121 pages, Paperback
Published June 12, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 17, 2019
I've read virtually everything Harrison has written, and most have been very, VERY good. I wouldn't call this QUITE as interesting, or on a par, as his Pulitzer finalist Marjorie Prime, but it does tackle a seriously neglected issue within the LGBT community; which is the fact that the rights of the 'T' in that equation frequently gets shoved aside when the other three have achieved parity for themselves. The dialogue is fierce and frequently funny, although gets a bit TOO polemical at times. But how great that Harrison has written a substantial role for a trans man, even if that means the play won't get produced that frequently, I suspect. Also, by the end of the play, I 'get' the title, but it IS rather misleading, since there are no actual Log Cabin Republican characters, per se.
October 14, 2023
Unfortunately, to merely call this play a disappointment would be an understatement at best. I picked it up at The Drama Bookshop in the city, thrilled to finally find a physical copy of one of the <10 (I wish I was being hyperbolic!) published plays featuring a transgender character— specifically, a transgender man, which aligns with my identity. My mistake, which I realized pretty immediately after I began reading, was assuming that the playwright was trans. I heard the premise (a trans guy hangs out with his cisgender queer friends and challenges how “progressive” they really are) and it didn’t even cross my mind that the playwright could be cis. Weird thing for a cis person to decide to tackle, right? Unfortunately, Harrison (a white cisgender man) very clearly does not have a very good grasp of what issues it IS appropriate for him to tackle— this in particular is not my place to speak on, but I also was a bit off-put by his vague, sporadic attempts to speak on racism, especially coming from the voice of a Black character. These comments were never fully addressed or explored by any of the characters past a monosyllabic reprimand here and there, and the two characters who are in an interracial relationship, Chris and Ezra, seemingly just “got over it” by the end of the play without any further discussion, I guess?
Anyway! Onto the play itself. Oh god. I’m not even going to take the time to critique it from a technical perspective because there are just so many worse things to get into, but it was a pretty weird and half-baked premise to begin with. A lesbian couple is having a baby and their gay friends hang out at their incredibly high-end Brooklyn apartment a lot? The baby is born and doesn’t speak for the first few years of his life, until there is a cryptic, strange babies-only scene at the end of the play in which the baby reveals (to another baby, both for some reason played by adult men) that the reason he is afraid of is that he doesn’t want to say ignorant things. Whoaaa, so profound, right? Just a really weird way to make that point, and failed to strike me as particularly poignant or clever in either goal or form.
So, weird premise and structure aside, wow. The first few scenes feature only the cisgender queer characters, until the trans man is first introduced into the conversation and nearly immediately deadnamed and misgendered as the two guys regale their lesbian friends with a “funny” story about getting the trans guy’s pronouns wrong over dinner and it upsetting him. They then continue to deadname him and just generally be transphobic— and if this were a trans person’s words perhaps I would understand the point that was being (or attempting to be) made (that these queer people still manage to be ignorant despite being queer), but from a cis guy it just felt transphobic. I feel like we as a society have evolved past the need for a cis man (particularly a white one) to write an entire “comedic commentary” on behalf of a community of which he is not a part featuring 60+ pages of redundant transphobia and deadnaming/misgendering. I don’t care if your point is that the jokes aren’t funny. You still wrote the jokes.
All this being said, if this odd, privileged attempt at social commentary was Log Cabin’s worst fault, I don’t think I’d even be writing this review. No, unfortunately it had to get almost comically worse. This killing blow to any respect I had for the point Harrison was trying to make (in 2019, mind you! Not that long ago!!) comes in the form of Henry, the show’s lone transgender character. And oh boy, did they manage to pack some truly dazzling stereotypes in there. Bland and dickish at best, misogynistic and predatory at worst, I genuinely have no idea what the fuck Harrison thought he was doing in writing this character. Henry is first introduced to us with his “significantly younger” cisgender girlfriend (both other couples have quite standard age gaps for some reason, wonder what that’s about) who he proceeds to spend the entire night belittling and making fun of. (There’s also a weird moment where one of the lesbians asks if she specifically dates trans men to which her reply is in fact essentially yes! Which is! Weird!!!) Only a few pages later, Henry is engaging in a weird, gross affair with one of the, yes, lesbians, Jules, while in the same room as her infant child. So. There’s that. Henry is essentially just an amalgamation of every awful stereotype you’ve ever heard about trans men— angry, misogynistic, arrogant, sexually predatory…and it’s quite unclear if Harrison even attempts to balance this out with positive qualities, because if he does, he does a shit job at it! Reading Harrison’s depiction of Henry legitimately made me feel nauseated, and I can’t help but feel for whatever trans actor must have taken this part in the original production because nobody casts us anyway, certainly not on such a large scale, and certainly not to play ourselves. Maybe I’m projecting, as an actor myself I just can’t imagine it not leaving a truly awful taste in my mouth.
Anyway, the play naturally ends with the trans man for some reason carrying a child for the gay couple so that everyone can point and laugh and say “haha, it’s a pregnant man!” and, of course, another “hilarious” story of which the punchline is the father of Ezra, one of the gay guys, deadnaming Henry and calling him a woman:) So.
Perhaps even worse than all of this, however, is the following statement made by Jordan Harrison in an interview about the play, specifically speaking on being referred to as cisgender:
"It felt strange to live my whole life without the term 'cis' and then be told that's what I am….That lumps me into a category with all the horrible people who made me feel different. It felt like some of my history had been eradicated. Obviously, that's not the goal of the trans movement. We need to be aware of how we trigger each other. We need to honor each other."
This is an argument that Ezra makes in the play as well, and I legitimately was mind-blown to discover that this was not, in fact, another poorly executed attempt at depicting cis gays’ transphobia, but a statement that Harrison himself actually publicly chose to double down on? Does this guy actually believe that being referred to as cis, which is literally just an adjective!! is apparently “eradicating” his queer experience?? It’s giving Elon Musk. White cis gay men in particular I am begging you to get over yourselves!!!
I don’t even know why I’m bothering writing this review, maybe I just hope Jordan Harrison or any other cis person who has decided to take it upon themselves to write on behalf of the trans community will see this and maybe, I don’t know, don’t do that? 2019 is far too recently for this play to have been written, and I’m saddened and disappointed that it was produced by Playwrights Horizons. I’m sure (or I’d like to hope) that Harrison’s intentions were good, but whatever they were, this play was, in my opinion, a colossal failure: stereotypical at best, outright offensive at worst. Even the few moments of clever dialogue were not nearly enough to save the play from its underdeveloped “protagonists” and the overwhelming sense I got that Harrison has never spoken to a trans person in his life. There’s already so little representation for our community, especially in theatre, and for this to be one of the few roles? To be quite honest, I’d rather not be represented at all.
On a fairly serious note, though: especially in this current political climate, this is a play that has the potential to be damaging at best and dangerous at worst. Whatever Harrison’s intentions were, all Log Cabin does is perpetuate some of the worst transphobic stereotypes and allow a bunch of cis gay people to have a cheeky little laugh at how “naughty” they are for holding transphobic views. If you’re cis and liked the play, I urge you to think about it a little harder. What did you like? Did you actually learn something from it, or was it just an outlet for you to feel excused from your own ignorance by having a little laugh? If you want to hear transgender stories, look to transgender writers. And if you don’t see enough, find and elevate the ones you DO. And if you feel you for some reason MUST write about trans people, for the love of god get a damn sensitivity reader.
Do better, I don’t know, I’m tired.
Anyway! Onto the play itself. Oh god. I’m not even going to take the time to critique it from a technical perspective because there are just so many worse things to get into, but it was a pretty weird and half-baked premise to begin with. A lesbian couple is having a baby and their gay friends hang out at their incredibly high-end Brooklyn apartment a lot? The baby is born and doesn’t speak for the first few years of his life, until there is a cryptic, strange babies-only scene at the end of the play in which the baby reveals (to another baby, both for some reason played by adult men) that the reason he is afraid of is that he doesn’t want to say ignorant things. Whoaaa, so profound, right? Just a really weird way to make that point, and failed to strike me as particularly poignant or clever in either goal or form.
So, weird premise and structure aside, wow. The first few scenes feature only the cisgender queer characters, until the trans man is first introduced into the conversation and nearly immediately deadnamed and misgendered as the two guys regale their lesbian friends with a “funny” story about getting the trans guy’s pronouns wrong over dinner and it upsetting him. They then continue to deadname him and just generally be transphobic— and if this were a trans person’s words perhaps I would understand the point that was being (or attempting to be) made (that these queer people still manage to be ignorant despite being queer), but from a cis guy it just felt transphobic. I feel like we as a society have evolved past the need for a cis man (particularly a white one) to write an entire “comedic commentary” on behalf of a community of which he is not a part featuring 60+ pages of redundant transphobia and deadnaming/misgendering. I don’t care if your point is that the jokes aren’t funny. You still wrote the jokes.
All this being said, if this odd, privileged attempt at social commentary was Log Cabin’s worst fault, I don’t think I’d even be writing this review. No, unfortunately it had to get almost comically worse. This killing blow to any respect I had for the point Harrison was trying to make (in 2019, mind you! Not that long ago!!) comes in the form of Henry, the show’s lone transgender character. And oh boy, did they manage to pack some truly dazzling stereotypes in there. Bland and dickish at best, misogynistic and predatory at worst, I genuinely have no idea what the fuck Harrison thought he was doing in writing this character. Henry is first introduced to us with his “significantly younger” cisgender girlfriend (both other couples have quite standard age gaps for some reason, wonder what that’s about) who he proceeds to spend the entire night belittling and making fun of. (There’s also a weird moment where one of the lesbians asks if she specifically dates trans men to which her reply is in fact essentially yes! Which is! Weird!!!) Only a few pages later, Henry is engaging in a weird, gross affair with one of the, yes, lesbians, Jules, while in the same room as her infant child. So. There’s that. Henry is essentially just an amalgamation of every awful stereotype you’ve ever heard about trans men— angry, misogynistic, arrogant, sexually predatory…and it’s quite unclear if Harrison even attempts to balance this out with positive qualities, because if he does, he does a shit job at it! Reading Harrison’s depiction of Henry legitimately made me feel nauseated, and I can’t help but feel for whatever trans actor must have taken this part in the original production because nobody casts us anyway, certainly not on such a large scale, and certainly not to play ourselves. Maybe I’m projecting, as an actor myself I just can’t imagine it not leaving a truly awful taste in my mouth.
Anyway, the play naturally ends with the trans man for some reason carrying a child for the gay couple so that everyone can point and laugh and say “haha, it’s a pregnant man!” and, of course, another “hilarious” story of which the punchline is the father of Ezra, one of the gay guys, deadnaming Henry and calling him a woman:) So.
Perhaps even worse than all of this, however, is the following statement made by Jordan Harrison in an interview about the play, specifically speaking on being referred to as cisgender:
"It felt strange to live my whole life without the term 'cis' and then be told that's what I am….That lumps me into a category with all the horrible people who made me feel different. It felt like some of my history had been eradicated. Obviously, that's not the goal of the trans movement. We need to be aware of how we trigger each other. We need to honor each other."
This is an argument that Ezra makes in the play as well, and I legitimately was mind-blown to discover that this was not, in fact, another poorly executed attempt at depicting cis gays’ transphobia, but a statement that Harrison himself actually publicly chose to double down on? Does this guy actually believe that being referred to as cis, which is literally just an adjective!! is apparently “eradicating” his queer experience?? It’s giving Elon Musk. White cis gay men in particular I am begging you to get over yourselves!!!
I don’t even know why I’m bothering writing this review, maybe I just hope Jordan Harrison or any other cis person who has decided to take it upon themselves to write on behalf of the trans community will see this and maybe, I don’t know, don’t do that? 2019 is far too recently for this play to have been written, and I’m saddened and disappointed that it was produced by Playwrights Horizons. I’m sure (or I’d like to hope) that Harrison’s intentions were good, but whatever they were, this play was, in my opinion, a colossal failure: stereotypical at best, outright offensive at worst. Even the few moments of clever dialogue were not nearly enough to save the play from its underdeveloped “protagonists” and the overwhelming sense I got that Harrison has never spoken to a trans person in his life. There’s already so little representation for our community, especially in theatre, and for this to be one of the few roles? To be quite honest, I’d rather not be represented at all.
On a fairly serious note, though: especially in this current political climate, this is a play that has the potential to be damaging at best and dangerous at worst. Whatever Harrison’s intentions were, all Log Cabin does is perpetuate some of the worst transphobic stereotypes and allow a bunch of cis gay people to have a cheeky little laugh at how “naughty” they are for holding transphobic views. If you’re cis and liked the play, I urge you to think about it a little harder. What did you like? Did you actually learn something from it, or was it just an outlet for you to feel excused from your own ignorance by having a little laugh? If you want to hear transgender stories, look to transgender writers. And if you don’t see enough, find and elevate the ones you DO. And if you feel you for some reason MUST write about trans people, for the love of god get a damn sensitivity reader.
Do better, I don’t know, I’m tired.
September 23, 2023
This was quite a ride, and I really liked it. It's the kind of story that's going to stay with me for a while. It takes place in 2015, when things seemed hopeful and inclusive. There's a group of close friends who are all married, some are gay, some are lesbian, and they're feeling pretty comfortable in a world that's becoming more accepting. But then, they start seeing things from the perspective of their bold transgender friend. It becomes clear that even in a time of progress, not everyone is on the same page.
January 29, 2021
Harrison’s Marjorie Prime is one of the strongest, most thought provoking plays I have read in the past five years. Although I enjoyed this play, it didn’t have as strong a follow through to its initial concept.
March 2, 2025
I had originally researched this play because I wanted to pick up a Contemporary monologue that fit with the person I am, a very queer trans man. I found that I LOVE Harrison’s writing, but it fell a little flat for me with Henry’s character? He has good moments, for sure! Real, true, raw, trans moments, but his portrayal is soured slightly by how sexually charged he is. Now I know, I know. CONTEMPORARY! But when he ruins his relationship with Myna, and just forgives Ezra for completely and utterly diminishing his transgender identity.. It ruins it for me.
What I mean by “diminishing” his identity, is that through the entire script, all of the characters misgender and judge him for being trans. They keep remarking on the ways in which he has sex with his partner Myna, and how she is strange for “always going for trans guys”. Then, he claps back! With a lengthy section of text he describes the tribulations he’s gone through for his identity, and how nothing will turn him back into the person he once was. Perhaps I’m remembering this poorly, but I recount that he also talks about not wanting to have kids on his own, despite having a little bit of baby fever. Then the story takes a 180 for me. Henry carries Ezra’s baby as a surrogate?? What happened to him fighting his internal dysphoria about this? What happened to Ezra being uncomfortable with Henry’s body? While are we all the sudden okay with a pregnant man? (like yes daddy pop off) but it just seems strange in the context of the story. If more explanation was given, more character building in the latter section of the script, I’d have given this a higher rating. But sadly, like I said, the characters kind of just fall flat at the end of the show.
Despite my negativity, Harrison portrays queer identities in many different ways and biases in this short play. I think the characters are incomprehensibly complex, and just need some of their own moments scattered throughout the show. A monologue or two perhaps! But, as a young reader, I do think this show reveals to its audience what it’s truly like to live in a heteronormative society through a queer lens. And it does not shy away from the offensive, to its benefit.
What I mean by “diminishing” his identity, is that through the entire script, all of the characters misgender and judge him for being trans. They keep remarking on the ways in which he has sex with his partner Myna, and how she is strange for “always going for trans guys”. Then, he claps back! With a lengthy section of text he describes the tribulations he’s gone through for his identity, and how nothing will turn him back into the person he once was. Perhaps I’m remembering this poorly, but I recount that he also talks about not wanting to have kids on his own, despite having a little bit of baby fever. Then the story takes a 180 for me. Henry carries Ezra’s baby as a surrogate?? What happened to him fighting his internal dysphoria about this? What happened to Ezra being uncomfortable with Henry’s body? While are we all the sudden okay with a pregnant man? (like yes daddy pop off) but it just seems strange in the context of the story. If more explanation was given, more character building in the latter section of the script, I’d have given this a higher rating. But sadly, like I said, the characters kind of just fall flat at the end of the show.
Despite my negativity, Harrison portrays queer identities in many different ways and biases in this short play. I think the characters are incomprehensibly complex, and just need some of their own moments scattered throughout the show. A monologue or two perhaps! But, as a young reader, I do think this show reveals to its audience what it’s truly like to live in a heteronormative society through a queer lens. And it does not shy away from the offensive, to its benefit.
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