Resistance in Remembrance: Playland Captures Memories of Queer Souls

Playland, having originally premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, is currently screening at Northwest Film Forum. Located in the heart of Capitol Hill, the Forum has worked for decades to amplify marginalized voices and exhibit non-commercial art—an appropriate venue for a film celebrating (and grieving for) queer history. 

Playland gives us one last night in Boston’s oldest and most infamous gay bar, featuring the ghosts who, even in life, haunted this place. Whimsical and bittersweet, Georden West’s film pays tribute to one of the oldest gay bars in the country: the Playland Cafe, previously located in the so-called Combat Zone in Boston, the city’s adult entertainment district.

The cast of characters includes bar flies, performers, servers, and all manner of debauches and renegades. Featuring Danielle Cooper (Pose) as our leather-clad guide and silent narrator, the audience watches a surreal, cinematic séance unfold as Cooper—identified only as Lady—summons the spirits of Playland past for one more night on the town. We view scenes from fixed positions in high corners or across tables; we are outsiders here, flies on the wall only invited to witness. 

The bar’s stage, while often in view and even in use, is not where the camera lingers. We are instead offered vignettes of private, everyday moments. Two kitchen coworkers snuggling in their car while listening to the radio; a server in the backroom dreaming of a life in the limelight; an exchange of cigarettes for polished nails. The glitz and glam of the many performances and drag shows that took place over the years are kept firmly at arm’s length.

Still from Playland

Frameline

West’s film focuses instead on those who kept the gears turning in the Boston haunt. Seamlessly blending the mundane and esoteric, West portrays the staff both romantically and realistically. Kitchen staff wear prim but plain jumpers while dancing for the viewer’s pleasure, making sure to make unwavering eye contact from the other side of the looking glass. Meanwhile, the waitress wears an enormous apron as a skirt, each pocket comically stuffed with notepads and orders, and the bartender drowns in receipt tape. Evocative imagery for anyone who has worked in food service. 

Playland has extremely limited dialogue. Instead, it contains audio clips of interviews and news stories about Boston and Playland’s history, making the film even more dreamlike in its delivery. While favoring visual drama for narrative structure, there are always stories to be found. Careful observers will be able to pick out storylines spanning the lifespan of the bar itself, taking place in the ‘40s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘90s, respectively. Watch the title cards with the character names and pay special attention to the fashion and costumes and you’ll find narrative threads. 

One such thread features Sunday. Young Sunday (Aidan Dick from When Men Were Men fame) starts out as a server in Playland, but he dreams of a life on stage. We see him watching performers enviously from the corner and dancing in the backroom, relishing in the dream of his own stardom. Sunday will get his dream, sort of. Older Sunday (The Lady Bunny from Lady Bunny fame) has worked his way up from serving drinks to swinging on stage in a tribute to Fragonard’s The Swing, quite possibly the most famous painting of France’s ostentatious Rococo era. The painting depicts a woman swinging coquettishly as a young man watches. Yet another man hovers in the shadows, pushing the swing while remaining firmly in the background.

Perhaps this is another reminder from the director that our frivolities come with a human cost. The privilege of prestige and pleasure often comes due to the efforts of an overlooked and invisible working class. Despite achieving his dream, Sunday does not seem pleased. We see him now at the bar, distant and cold. He’s lost his connection to the staff, but he also hasn’t gained satisfaction. A bittersweet but commonplace story, and just one of several. Playland feels like a visual nesting doll: the longer you watch, the more narratives you discover. 

The Playland Cafe was torn down after surviving and thriving for sixty years in 1998, one of many victims succumbing to a wave of “urban renewal” projects. It’s hard to not feel that cultural loss more poignantly now as we’re living through a fresh wave of queer erasure.

As the government attempts to banish swathes of identities from their websites and databases, we must remember: we know what we know now because of those who clung tightly and carried the knowledge forward. Like West’s film, we must endeavor to remember the lost places and people—not just the artists—but the people in the background keeping the show running: the feeders and the givers, the bouncers, and the dishwashers. Carve their names into your hearts. Remembrance and celebration is its own form of resistance. 

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***Editor’s Note: In the spirit of this film, we at The Echo send a loving pause to our Sapphic and Queer communities in mourning Shelley Brothers, founder of The Wildrose. The Rose stands as one of the last sapphic-centric bars in the United States, and Shelley (with co-owner Martha) kept the lights on for all of us through decades of social and political marginalization. Shelley will be sorely missed as an icon and pillar of community strength, joy, and resilience.