The title Anon suggests any number of references. It could be short for “anonymous”; it could allude to something Shakespeare has written, or you might think of QAnon, the conspiracy minded cult that warns of satanic sex-trafficking cabals run by Hollywood insiders and liberals drinking the blood of children. In truth, Anne Washburn’s latest play is about all of that. But mostly QAnon. A lot of people really do believe the conspiratorial nonsense…and that makes it ripe for dramatic exploration. Washburn is a smart writer and she makes a game effort but despite some first-rate performances, the play is emotionally inert and that’s a disappointment considering all the pieces are there. They just failed to connect.
The play’s protagonist, Jeanie (Crystal Finn) never mentions QAnon but there’s no doubt she’s falling deeper into the rabbit hole of disinformation. She’s already been banned from “X.” At the play’s start, “Biden’s America” is projected on an overhead screen with the date September, 2024 and we see Jeanie typing on a laptop. At first, she seems like a somewhat ordinary housewife in suburban San Antonio with husband Michael (Andrew Garman) and two children – a fifteen year old daughter named Delia, (Izabel Mar), whom she forgot to pick up at school, and an eight year old son who we never see. But it becomes clear that she is consumed with her “work” which amounts to posting on social media to her 312 followers and making TikTok posts demanding to know why “Fauci is still free and when will Hillary Clinton face judgement?” She ends one post asking “Where are the arrests…and The Storm, when is The Storm already?”
The scenes shift back and forth between Jeanie’s home and the home of her new neighbors – a gay couple – Adam (Jeff Biehl) and Will (Jeremy Shamos) who’ve just moved in. Adam has proudly planted a gay pride flag on the front lawn. It doesn’t take long before they discover that the “crazy neighbor lady” who’s posting from her car has spotted their flag and threatens to tear it down.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
In response, Will goes out and buys a gun which he admits he doesn’t have any idea how to use. It’s one of several foreboding scenes played with welcome humor by Shamos and Biehl. The two excellent actors keep us guessing if this is going to turn out to be a comedy or tragedy in the end.
Speaking of tragedies, Delia asks for her mother’s help on a school assignment in which she has to write a soliloquy for one of Shakespeare’s characters. She chooses Goneril in King Lear. Washburn is setting up a parallel with the Bard’s great tragedy. Like Lear, Jeanie appears to be descending into madness. And let’s not forget that Lear’s good daughter is named Cordelia.
Jeanie’s good daughter, Delia, (very nicely played by Mar) writes in her school essay “a soliloquy is the place where words are forged into weapons. Which we turn against another, or ourselves.” It’s an apt description of her mother’s TikTok “soliloquies.” And of course there’s a storm brewing. Just as Lear famously rants “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” Jeanie, completely unhinged in a rainstorm, shouts the same lines with her own spin, adding “Yes I’m talking to you Libtards! RINOs!”
Kudos to Finn, perfectly wacky as that “kook next door” who turns out to be a real threat. Jeanie’s on the precipice of full scale war. If only Washburn had allowed her to take the leap.
It’s all very clever, perhaps too clever for its own good. On a cerebral level, Anon offers plenty food for thought. The insanity of QAnon’s wild conspiracy theories has become disturbingly pervasive and I applaud Anon’s effort to sound the alarm. But for all its dramatic ambitions, nothing is resolved and the production leaves the characters and the audience hanging, strangely unmoved.
Anne Kauffman’s direction makes ample use of projections which help to keep the two hour plus production moving, effectively setting us up for a climactic ending. I’ll say no more except that when a playwright invokes King Lear, clearly aiming for parallels, we’re at least due for a good catharsis.
Anon opened October 14, 2026, at the MCC Theater Space and runs through November 1. Tickets and information: mcctheater.org
