Diversionary’s ‘Merry Me’ a sex comedy that mixes classic and contemporary themes

The cast of Diversionary Theatre’s “Merry Me,” from left, Mak Shealy, Winnie Beasley, Michael Amira Temple, Jacquelyn Ritz and Andréa Agosto. (Talon Reed Cooper)

UPDATED: May 22, 2025 at 1:52 PM PDT

Wartime is play time in Hansol Jung’s “Merry Me.”

But that’s oversimplifying the “lesbian sex comedy” suggested to the South Korean playwright by director Leigh Silverman, a Tony winner last year for the musical “Suffs.” Jung’s ambitious script draws from sources as disparate as Restoration playwright William Wycherley’s comedy “The Country Wife” and the Greek myth of Agamemnon. Even Marvel movies.

At its core, “Merry Me” is the tale of one Lt. Shane Horne, its queer protagonist with an insatiable hunger for the “merries” lacking in their many sexual escapades on the military base. Also factoring into the story is the angel from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”

“It’s very much a writer’s show with the beats and the timing and the wordplay. It’s funny and witty and smart,” said Winnie Beasley, who’s playing Horne in a new production of “Merry Me” opening next week at Diversionary Theatre, which produced playwright Jung’s “Cardboard Piano” in 2018.

Familiarity with all of “Merry Me’s” literary, historical and cultural references is not required, said Beasley, “but there are Easter eggs in the play for people who do know them.”

Beasley, a teaching artist at the Old Globe, is performing at Diversionary for the first time. Likewise, Vanessa Stalling, head of graduate directing at UCSD, is making her Diversionary directorial debut with “Merry Me.”

“This is a play about trying to find happiness and satisfaction,” said Stalling. “In particular for femme folks who might feel it’s their duty to give and give and give. It asks ‘What is it to find your own happiness within that kind of paradigm?’ Part of what we’re seeing in this play is there’s ultimately happiness coming from reciprocal collaboration and from listening to your own power that you’ve been ignoring for some time.”

That happiness can come from not just reciprocal collaboration, said Beasley, but from love, too.

“We live in a time right now,” they said, “where people feel more and more emboldened to not move with love in their hearts, especially in regard to the LGBTQ community. This show encourages you to seek love and to seek love that is reciprocal.”

Both Beasley and Stalling recognize the connection of this play to the queer community at large.

“In queer communities,” Beasley said, “we have chosen family and have learned about ing each other, and the result of that manifests itself a lot in this show as Shane is on their journey to find pleasure and how pleasure can be a tool for activism and for moving things forward and for peace.”

“It’s helpful when we are able to tune into that part of ourselves. I think that the queer experience often focuses on what feels good because we have so much experience with what feels bad.”

To Stalling, “there’s something about doing theater” that makes it such “a joyful, powerful place to be. At times maybe you want to give up or feel isolated or alone. Here (with ‘Merry Me’) we are watching people still going after their happiness. That’s such a powerful thing in the play and it really does create a sense of community.”

She recalled feeling “super alone” after the 2024 presidential election only to be uplifted by seeing a production at Diversionary.

“To go watch ‘Midnight at the Never Get,’ I suddenly felt like ‘I’m not alone,’” Stalling said.

The seven-person “Merry Me” cast also includes Andréa Agosto, Jacquelyn Ritz, Mak Shealy, Coleman Ray Clark, Troy Tinker-Elliot, who appeared in “Midnight at the Never Get,” and as the Angel, Michael Amira Temple. Temple and Beasley started as Old Globe teaching artists at the same time and both work with the performance activist program Imagine: Brave Spaces.