Review: "Conceal Me What I Am" Broaches Breeches Roles in Shakespeare and Beyond

Conceal Me What I Am

Created and directed by Natalie Kane

Presented by FRIGID New York and Ladies & Fools at The Chain Studio Theatre

312 W 36th St. 4th floor, Manhattan, NYC 

April 4-19, 2025

Tia Cassmira, Chloe Chappa, and Maya Barbon. Photo by Natalie Kane.
Taking its title from Viola’s famous declaration in Twelfth Night as she plans to cross dress, Conceal Me What I Am presents a charming tour through some of the most well- and lesser-known breeches roles in classical theatre. Interspersing scenes featuring various cross-dressing heroines with monologues about the history and function of this trope, the production is a charmingly acted tour of theater history. In the end, it raises more questions than it provides answers about the relationship between these roles and the exploration of gender in the plays in which they feature. Conceal Me What I Am is one of 63 shows currently part of the 2025 New York City Fringe Festival, which runs through April 20th across four venues in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn

Conceal Me What I Am’s cast is the real strength of the production. Maya Barbon (playing Leonora from Ana Caro’s Valor, Outrage, and Woman, and others), Tia Cassmira (playing Viola from Twelfth Night, and others), and Chloe Chappa (playing Rosalind from As You Like It, and others) are thoroughly convincing in their various roles. Particularly in the primary roles they play which recur throughout the production, the cast is especially adept at making it clear through voice and gesture which character they are playing. Admittedly, some of their minor roles are a bit hard to keep track of, as the play pulls from lesser-known Shakespeare plays (like Two Gentlemen of Verona) and female playwrights of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Elizabeth Polwhele, Hannah Cowley, and Charlotte von Stein). While the performances were consistently strong throughout, it is the major roles that the audience can easily follow as the characters reappear.
Tia Cassmira, Chloe Chappa, and Maya Barbon. Photo by Natalie Kane
At one point, the play makes an interesting detour away from breeches roles, which occur largely in comedies, to other Shakespeare plays in which heroines challenge gender norms through language. Tia Cassmira delivers a brilliant rendition of Lady Macbeth’s famous “unsex me here” monologue in Scottish brogue to begin this section of the production. There is a great deal of potential here for further probing about how all of these roles, whether cross-dressing comedic heroines or gender-bending women in other genres, challenge gender roles, norms, and expression, a consideration from which the production ultimately shies away. But perhaps that is the point—a pleasant hour in the theater can only intimate the bigger issues that underlie a production, but the questions raised there can reverberate long after.

-Stephanie Pietros

More reviews from the 2025 New York City Fringe Festival:

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