Jane Wickline and Liva Pierce’s “Dukes” at SoHo Playhouse

Jane Wickline, a Saturday Night Live cast member, and Liva Pierce, a Second City alum, perform the musical-comedy revue “Dukes” at the SoHo Playhouse in New York. The show, directed by Henry Hornbuckle and Mabel Lewis, follows two lovable losers—best friends and roommates with bad jobs and no girlfriends—killing time in a cartoonish apartment. The duo blends queer in-jokes, vaudevillian sensibility, and musical numbers parodying pop-funk with a folksier edge. Highlights include a philosophical song about porn, a surreal number about rescuing a crystal goose, and a bit where Wickline throws her phone into the Hudson River. The performance runs eighty minutes and draws comparisons to Bo Burnham, Flight of the Conchords, and the Lonely Island. The audience, predominantly elder Gen Z, was unusually young for a New York theatre crowd. The review also mentions Ryan Drake’s interactive play “Big Feelings” at the Cell Theatre, where audience members play first graders and a teacher (Julia Greer) reveals a darker narrative.