Dennis Bush’s THE SLOPPY ABANDON OF EXCAVATED LOVE in NYC: A Review- Jed Ryan, Lavender After Dark Media

As the very first production of New York City’s 2026 Fresh Fruit Festival on Monday, April 20th, Dennis Bush’s The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love had high expectations.  Indeed, the play met this challenge with flying (rainbow flag) colors. Directed by Lester Thomas Shane, the comedy-drama offers an intimate look at four openly gay men whose lives are intertwined not only personally, but also via the trajectory of gay male history through the last five decades.  If that sounds like an overly grand description, I assure you it’s not.  The different ages of the characters affect their personalities, their outlooks on their own lives, and how they interact with each other.  When one of the 35-ish characters makes a musical theater reference that the 20-something man doesn’t understand, it’s one of the funniest and also most realistic moments in the show. (The audience, for the record, got the reference!) Aaron (John Trindl) is Generation Z.  Kelvin (Mark-Eugene Garcia) is Generation X.  Marcus (Chris Ikner) and Jason (Collin Hendley) are somewhere in between.  There is also the voice of yet another generation making his presence known in The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love— but more about that later…  ​

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Aaron (played with quick-witted perfection by Trindl) is the first character we meet in the play, and he enters the stage ALMOST completely nude– except for one orange sock.  Shortly afterward, Kelvin (a character seemingly custom-written for Garcia’s bold acting style) comes out in an open robe– with nothing on underneath.  Indeed, the bare attributes of the easy-on-the-eyes cast members grabbed the attention of the audience immediately– which is, of course, always essential in the theater.  But it was arguably NOT done (just) for titillation purposes.  As the audience learned later on, the actions of these characters– which may or may not include walking around the apartment in various stages of undress– are perfectly suited to their personalities.  But more about being “naked” later… 
The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love takes place entirely in the Manhattan apartment of Marcus and Kelvin. Marcus and Kelvin are friends and sometimes “frenemies”, were formerly “friends with benefits”, and have been apartment-mates for 11 years.  Aaron is Kelvin’s new boyfriend, and much is made throughout the play about the age difference between the two men.  Later on, a fourth guy, Jason, enters the scenario.  Marcus and Jason were also lovers in the past, but Jason also has some history with one of the other men in this play as well  (Jason is perfectly played by Hendley; the character is no less than a sponge for affection.) Although three of the men in Bush’s piece may seem like gay male caricatures– the youthful, seemingly carefree twink Aaron, the unapologetically cocksure stud Kelvin, and the hopelessly romantic, emotionally needy Jason– I’ll assuredly state that every gay man knows guys like Aaron, Kelvin, and Jason in real life.  And, as over-the-top as these men can be– both individually and as a group– their characters have been written as fully formed humans.  The same can be said for Marcus, played excellently with seemingly staid stability by Ikner.  Rounding out the cast is Sula (a delightful Grace Maddux), the sassy and smart lesbian neighbor who the audience meets when she enters the boys’ apartment like a guided missile, looking for a set of tweezers.  I won’t reveal WHY she needed them. (Let it be said that all the characters in The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love know how to make a dramatic first impression…) 
Act 2 is when secrets are revealed, and long-simmering feelings and emotions some to the surface. Even the most astute of audience members will be caught off guard at the unexpected disclosures.   While I mentioned five characters in the play, there is actually a sixth character, albeit one that’s unseen.  That character is the unknown author of a journal left in Marcus and Kelvin’s apartment.  The journal, of which many passages are read in the play’s running time, serves as a vividly bittersweet exploration of a specific gay male counterculture of the past.  The journal candidly reveals the viewpoint of a man who lived through one of the most challenging times in history to be openly gay: the height of the AIDS epidemic. From the references to Polaroids and open sexual activity on abandoned trucks in the Meatpacking District, it’s most assuredly the 80’s  These entries are not only challenging and sometimes VERY rough to hear, but are also strikingly realistic: They speak frankly about  illness and death– and its association with gay sex at the time.  I couldn’t help but imagine the inevitable movie adaption of this play, where the unseen sixth character is voiced by or even represented onscreen by a separate flesh-and-blood actor, via flashbacks.  Ryan Murphy, are you listening? 
Some heavy subjects are explored in The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love.  This play never holds back: Be prepared for some uncensored talk about cum, dick pics, “convenience sex”, and more– plus some pieces of “advice”, many of them courtesy of the aforementioned journalist: “Any guy who washes his jockstrap after only one wearing will not have sex without showering first– and that tells you everything you need to know.  He is NOT to be trusted!”. As mentioned earlier, the first man we see in The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love is about 99.9% naked– but the raw, patently adult dialogue in this play goes way beyond any actual nudity we see on stage.  That said, even at its most serious moments, there is no shortage of humor, thanks to Bush’s endlessly snappy script.  All the hardworking actors get their share of funny lines (“We can stick our dicks in each other, but going through his phone is an invasion of privacy?!”, asks one character.), although Grace Maddux as Sula gets the lucky(?) position of being the purveyor of female-centered humor in this sea of testosterone– with a seemingly innocent reference to hairless cats that the audience particularly went wild over.  
Humorous and provocative at the same time, The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love is a fearless, transgenerational exploration of gay male sexuality.
The Sloppy Abandon of Excavated Love has one more performance on Saturday, April 25 at 2:00PM. at wild project, located at 195 East 3rd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information about this show and others in the 2026 Fresh Fruit Festival, visit 26_mstage – Fresh Fruit Festival