The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, December 11, 2019— 5A

“There’s no place like home for the holidays.” 
This lyric from the popular song “Home 
for the Holidays” has become a staple of the 
holiday season. However, while rampant 
global consumerism and capitalism wants us to 
believe the holidays are filled with gingerbread 
houses and smiling grandmas, that is simply 
not the case for many Americans. Many of us 
(especially those in the LGBTQIA+ community) 
search for a home away from home during the 
holiday season. At least, that’s what Taylor 
Mac, co-director and star of “Taylor Mac’s 
Holiday Sauce” did. According to their website, 
“Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce” is a “two-hour 
intermission-less extravaganza (musical show) 
for an adult, gay-friendly audience.” 
In an interview with “Q Voice News,” Mac 
(who uses the pronoun “judy” lowercase sic 
unless at the start of a sentence) described 
judy’s holiday experience as “tortorous and 
homophobic.” Mac said, “‘Holiday Sauce’ is a 
tribute to my drag mother, Mother Flawless 
Sabrina. I went to a Christmas party and a 
couple of holiday parties at her house. They 
were the best. The parties were so freeing. I 
didn’t have to hang out with family. I could be 
myself. It was a loving environment.”
“Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce” is brought to 
Ann Arbor by the University Musical Society. 
Mac, along with a “spectacular” band and 
surprise special guests, will take the stage of 
the Power Center Sat. Dec. 14 at 8 p.m. and Sun. 
Dec. 15 at 4 p.m. 
“Taylor grew up queer and went on to 
find a found family in New York City,” said 
Co-Director of “Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce” 

Niegel Smith in an interview with The 
Daily. Smith and Taylor are longtime artistic 
collaborators. “Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce” 
is just another one of their collaborative 
masterpieces. 
“Taylor and I are working to make the culture 
we want to see in the world,” Smith said. The 
performances in “Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce” 
contain a celebratory and healing culture 
that extends to its audience, too. The audience 
members, many who may or may not find solace 
in going home for the holidays, can certainly 
find an exciting home for themselves while 
watching the performance. 
“I hope everyone is a little surprised and 
delighted, and we center our elders and those 
who came before us. You’ll know what I mean 
by that when you come to the show,” Smith said.
Like its audience, the show itself is changing 
and growing with the times. “Each iteration 
(of) the work changes … constantly evolving 
as we evolve and as our world evolves,” Smith 
said. 
The show skillfully uses costuming to 
comment on our ever-changing world. Costume 
designer Machine Dazzle has created costumes 
that can be considered characters of their own.
“There is a maximalism in Machines’ 
aesthetic. Inside each costume are added 
layers that slowly reveal themselves,” Smith 
said. “Machine is looking to not only express 
the character with the costumes but to show a 
deeper message beneath.” 
The costuming for this show is incomparable 
to almost everything in our current theatrical 
landscape.

‘Holiday Sauce’ hits home

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

ALIX CURNOW
Daily Arts Writer

Shia LaBeouf has always been a character. In 2014, at the Berlin Film 
Festival, he wore a paper bag over his head reading “I am Not Famous 
Anymore.” Later that same year, he performed #IAMSORRY, where 
he wore the paper bag again and let people visit him in a room while 
he sat silently, sometimes weeping. On top of these performances 
were multiple arrests for public drunkenness, that culminated in a 
2017 incident after which he attended a 12-step rehab and anger 
management program. That is where “Honey Boy,” written by 
LaBeouf and directed by Alma Har’el (“LoveTrue”), was written. 
In an opening montage centered around LaBeouf’s breakthrough 
in the early 2000s, Otis, LaBeouf’s cinematic alter ego played by 
Lucas Hedges (“Boy Erased”), falls apart in a booze soaked spiral as 
he films blockbuster after blockbuster. It’s jarring, almost painfully 
so, making it the perfect way to convey a fractured, addicted 
headspace. After a horrific car wreck and an arrest where he spars 
with police officers, Otis is sent to rehab. 
Then the movie jumps to Otis’s childhood. Noah Jupe (“A Quiet 
Place”), a child actor, plays young Otis. His father, played by LaBeouf, 
acts as his chaperone. He’s a recovering alcoholic and convicted 
felon, constantly hitting on the nearest woman and reminding anyone 
and everyone about his glory days as a rodeo clown. He’s latched onto 
his son for the money from his acting success, not to right any wrongs. 

Yet this is no caricature — LaBeouf has never performed this well 
or this honestly. Playing his own father, LaBeouf wears his heart on 
his sleeve. He’s not afraid to rip it to shreds right in front of one’s eyes. 
The bulk of the movie is conversations between Otis and his father, 
with each character asking for what the other cannot give them. Otis 
needs a stable adult in his life, while his father wants his son to forgive, 
condone and encourage his bad choices. While their relationship 
is anything but healthy, there’s still love between them, which, for 
better or for worse, makes it hard for either of them to step away. 
Adult Otis watches this all play out with the audience, trying 
to come to terms with it. The rehab scenes are just as honest as 

the 
flashbacks, 
with 
LaBeouf 
psychoanalyzing his own anger 
issues, narcissism, trauma and 
addiction. It’s incredibly brave. 
“Honey 
Boy” 
is 
a 
riveting 
dialogue between past and present; 
between violence and trauma. It’s 
genuinely heartbreaking. There 
are no easy answers, and one gets 
the sense that LaBeouf himself 
still isn’t sure how to feel about his 
father. 
Looking 
back, 
LaBeouf’s 
performance art doesn’t seem 
so silly. Of course he would try 
and avoid fame after what his 
childhood was like. Plus, what’s so 
different between making a movie 
like “Honey Boy” and sitting alone 
with strangers and crying one’s 
eyes out, laying personal trauma 
bare for all the world to see? It may 
not be the most subtle, structured 
or healthy way to go about things, 
but it makes for remarkable 
cinema.

‘Honey Boy’ is a heartbreaking look at past & present

FILM REVIEW

ANDREW WARRICK
Daily Arts Writer

Honey 
Boy

State Theatre

Amazon Studios

“Reprisal” thinks it’s really cool. And you know 
what? It’s right. “Reprisal” is cool. It’s a gorgeous 
blend of neon lights, Lolita sunglasses, dank motel 
rooms, rusty hot rods and sequins on burlesque 
costumes. The time period is hazy — flip phones 
are as present as pastel rotary landlines. “Reprisal” 
has a lot going for it. Whether it’s enough to be truly 
worthwhile remains to be seen.
The story, while presented as twisted and 
complex, is rather simple: A man betrays a woman. 
The woman gets revenge. The man 
and woman in question, however, 
are brother and sister. Together, 
they make up a sibling team who 
run a vaguely Southern, extremely 
violent gang called the Banished 
Brawlers. Picking up years after 
her brother Burt left her for dead, 
“Reprisal” 
follows 
Katherine 
Harlow (Abigail Spencer, “Mad 
Men,”) now under the alias Doris 
Quinn. Since her brush with death, 
Doris married a wealthy Detroit 
restauranteur with a terminal 
illness, so she eventually can collect 
his inheritance.
Meanwhile, a former employee of Doris, 
Ethan Hart (Mena Massoud, “Aladdin”) arrives 
at Burt’s Bang-a-Rang, a no-holds-barred night 
club operating as the Brawlers’s headquarters. 
Ethan is soon recruited by a smaller group called 
the Three River Phoenixes to help transport 
contraband between the Bang-a-Rang’s various 
branch locations. As a Phoenix, Ethan meets — 
and becomes infatuated with — the club’s star 
pin-up girl Meredith (Madison Davenport, “Sharp 
Objects”) who happens to be the daughter of the 
gang’s leader, Burt Harlow. 
As Ethan gains trust with the Phoenixes, he 
communicates his successes with Doris, who has 
been slowly building a gang of her own to take 
down the Brawlers from the inside. With the help of 
two small-time criminals and her timid daughter-

in-law, Doris sets out to reclaim her identity as 
Katherine and destroy her brother’s empire. 
Despite its solid concept and striking exterior, 
“Reprisal” starts off slow and relies on gratuitous 
violence and trite mobster-movie dialogue to 
bide time before Doris/Katherine can get bloody 
revenge. Within the first four episodes, the show 
sets up so many subplots for minor characters that, 
even with a flawless look, the story feels messy and 
disorganized. 
Rather than explore the nuances of Doris’s story, 
“Reprisal” sets up every character as seeking their 
own individual form of redemption. Ethan’s wanted 
for murder in Michigan. Meredith searches for her 
missing stunt-woman mother and 
sells dangerous hallucinogens to 
bankroll her investigation. Gang 
elder Joel (Rodrigo Santoro, “300”) 
leads the Brawlers while trying 
to raise his young daughter away 
from the violence. Burlesque emcee 
Queenie (Lea DeLaria, “Orange 
Is the New Black”) tries to assert 
herself as a valuable member of 
the gang. As the season progresses, 
“Reprisal” starts feeling more like a 
TV-MA version of “Riverdale” than 
a coherent, adult drama. 
The stakes of “Reprisal” are 
constantly changing, and, as a 
result, the pacing of the show suffers. One minute, 
a room of bikers are getting murdered. The 
next, a girl watches a home video from the ’70s. 
Yet, somehow, both moments are still boring in 
comparison to the very best of the show’s visuals. 
In trying to cross over into multiple genres and 
aesthetics, “Reprisal” can’t settle on what actually 
works.
“Reprisal” may not be the next “Sopranos” 
or “Sons of Anarchy.” It may not be the most 
innovative or compelling thing on TV right now. It 
may not even be the best “woman seeks revenge in 
patriarchal system” show on Hulu at the moment 
— looking at you, “Handmaid’s Tale.” However, 
if “Reprisal” can figure out what its strongest 
characters and story lines are, the show could end 
up being just as cool as it looks.

‘Reprisal’ is try-hard TV

TV REVIEW

ANYA SOLLER
Daily Arts Writer

It turns out 2019 wasn’t the Year of the Pig: 
2019 was actually the Year of the Orange. Yeah, 
that’s right. But what does that mean, you might 
find yourself asking. I’ll tell you. 2019 was the Year 
of the Orange because San Francisco, CA’s finest, 
Larry June, dropped not one, not two, but five 
albums. In one year! That’s crazy. It’s like that time 
in 2017 when King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard 
released four solo albums and one collaborative 
album (with the Mild High Club). Each of those 
albums had their own sound and vibe, which 
was a hell of a lot of fun to listen to throughout 
the year. The same goes for Larry June’s string of 
releases over the past twelve months. 
Two things make Larry’s historic run different 
from that of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, 
though. First, he’s a rapper. Second, his five 
albums were a lot more fun to listen to throughout 
the year. 
Larry June is such a developed and fully-
realized character that it’s hard to take him 
seriously as an artist. For his entire career, he has 
worked to maintain a certain persona, one that’s 
carefree, loose, candid and in love with Whole 
Foods. He loves his city, oranges (so much that 
they’re featured prominently on a couple of his 
album covers), riding his bike and looking after his 
son. On the microphone, he’s a goofy character. 
There’s no debating that. He’s prone to erratically 
hopping on and off the beat, often just to talk shit 
and stunt. He adlibs things like “good job, Larry” 
and “yeehee!” at the end of damn near every line 
he raps. He often relies more on his charisma 
than his rapping ability to entertain listeners. He 
releases a lot of music, at least a couple of times 
per year. Some of it good, some of it bad, very little 
of it great. But he took December of 2018 and most 
of the new year’s first two months off to collect 
himself. It’s a good thing he did. Starting with the 
release of his first project of 2019, February’s Early 
Bird, there was a new Larry in town.
Early Bird is the perfect execution of the things 
everyone loves about Larry June: the ad-libs, 
the rants, the health food talk, the shit talk and 
the bizarre flexes. He raps about the things that 
normal people talk about with their friends. 
However, unlike past releases, the flows are 
tighter, bars more descriptive and the sound more 
cohesive. The beat selection is impeccable, bouncy 
and never boring. At one point on album opener 
“Lets Go Eat,” he raps, assisted by a bombastic 
take on the classic Bay Area sound, “This not 
a date baby girl, this just how I play / A little 65 

dollars ain’t nothing to me.” That’s the Larry 
everyone loves, flexing the same way an average 
person would when talking about a night out.
However, Larry introduces a new side of 
himself in this new project. He was seldom ever 
sentimental or introspective on his previous 
releases, but on Early Bird, he shows that he’s more 
than just a braggadocious goofball. On the chorus 
of the title track, he delves into his personal life 
a bit, rapping, “To live like this, you gon have to 
take Ls / You gon have to fall off, you gon have to 
bounce back / Have you ever lost it all, hundred 
thou to a rat / God, I’d trade everything to have 
my grandma back.” Moments like these show just 
how much Larry June has grown as an artist. You 
can’t help but be proud of him.
His next project, April’s The Port of San 
Francisco, keeps the ball rolling. This time around, 
though, Larry shows off some of his versatility. 
The album is slower, groovier and more intimate, 
thanks to its soul-inspired sound. It’s like a loved-
up version of Early Bird, and it’s so fun to listen 
to. The album reaches its climax on the Polyester 
the Saint-assisted song, “Let’s Get Smoothies.” He 
talks about all the things he loves about his girl, 
and it’s not just the obvious things that rappers 
often say when they praise their girls. He points 
to her aversion to posting too much on Instagram, 
and he suggests taking her biking around the 
city — something that he typically only does by 
himself. This album proved that Early Bird wasn’t 
just a fluke and that 2019 really has been Larry’s 
year.
What’s 
impressive 
is 
that 
each 
release 
brings something different to the table. June’s 
CardoGotWings-produced Mr. Midnight brought 
the extra-boastful bangers, September’s Out the 
Trunk brought the chillers and October’s Product 
of the Dope Game brought a street-oriented mix of 
them all, like a victory lap of sorts. Each release 
reveals a new dimension of Larry. The widely-
mocked rapper has transformed himself into 
someone respectable. 
What’s great about it all, though, is that Larry 
never forgets who he is. He’s still the same Larry 
on each album. He still flexes about pedestrian 
things, like how much his Hydroflask cost, while 
spouting motivational speeches, often on the 
same song. He’s still hilarious and unleashes the 
best ad-libs in the game, even if he does go a little 
overboard at times (he really goes off on “Baggage 
Claim”). He’s still addicted to oranges. With these 
five albums, he finished carving out his own lane, 
something he’s been trying to do for his entire 
career. Larry is finally starting to get the love he 
deserves, and rightfully so. 2019 was his year, the 
Year of the Orange.

This was Year of the Orange

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer

AMAZON STUDIOS

THE FREEMINDED / YOUTUBE

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

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