Blood, Sweat, and Queers

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Blood, Sweat, and Queers, the 2019 winner of Czech Play of the Year, comes to New York for the first time through the Truth International Theater Festival in a 2024 English translation from Edward Einhorn (who also directs) and Katarina Vizina. Originally written by Tomas Dianiška (1000 Things I Think Suck, The Last Reason Not to Kill Yourself), the work tells the story of real-life Czech athlete Zdeněk Koubek (Hennessy Winkler), an intersex trans man and professional athlete in the 1930s. He won several medals at the 1934 Women’s World Games, but did not compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics after it was discovered (to the world’s surprise as much as his own) that Zdeněk was intersex. His athletic career forcibly ended, he pursued medical transition and lived out his life as a man.

Einhorn’s (Cabaret in Captivity, The Last Cyclist) clever directing is informed heavily by the subject matter, effectively communicating the interwar period’s boundless optimism and popular celebration of athletics. During the show, actors sometimes jog in circles around the audience or mime playing soccer in between the aisles. It’s a unique yet commendable choice, emphasizing the vitality of sport and prevailing contemporary attitudes. Costume designer Ramona Ponce puts the characters in athletic wear more often than not, a necessary choice given the amount of movement in the show but one that adds to the overarching theme nicely. All the movement is choreographed in service of this idea, and it is easily the play’s strongest aspect.

In place of a physical background in the set, the play makes use of a large screen (by video designer Chris Carcione and sound designer Becca Silver) at the back of the stage that incorporates still images, video, and sound. These flourishes often add a note of historical grounding to scenes, such as the real-life interview footage of Zdeněk towards the end or interwar paintings of partygoers during a scene of revelry. Other times, however, orchestral hits reminiscent of Law and Order distract from the play’s action rather than enhance it.

Fascism, the prevailing political movement of the era, looms quite large in the narrative. An attempt is made to highlight the similarities between the Nazi persecution of Jews and that of queer people in the same era, an effort that sometimes yields interesting results but frequently does not. A particularly clever moment in the script is when the track coach (Craig Anderson) refers to Zdeněk’s intersex nature as a “stab in the back,” neatly tying together the direct comparison while playing into the larger themes of rising fascism, professional sports, and the persecution of transgender/intersex people.

Too often, however, the direct fascist imagery has little substance to it and veers into lazy shock humor. A newscaster half jokingly ends a broadcast with “sieg hiel, as the kids say” (before performing the associated gesture) and Zdeněk’s fellow track athlete Eliška (Jean-Marie Stodolski) graffitis a Jewish shopkeeper’s window before joking that “stars are so romantic.” Regardless of intent, such scenes often result in little more than tired vulgarity for its own sake.

Hennessy Winkler (Sweeney Todd, Oklahoma!) is an excellent Zdeněk. He successfully creates much sympathy for the character, portraying him as genuinely confused as to why everyone hates him. Whenever Zdeněk runs, Winkler gets this look of intense focus, as if the entire world has fallen away. The character’s relationship to running is a major theme, and Winkler reflects that relationship in his performance quite effectively. One of the best emotional beats in the play is when Zdeněk (still living as a woman at this point) catches himself in the mirror sporting a fake mustache he wore to play a male character in a local show. Winkler portrays the moment’s realization as quiet and curious. It’s grounded and real to the transgender experience and a genuinely heartwarming moment. Winkler really brings everything he can to these quiet scenes. Unfortunately, the script contains precious few of those.

Much is made of how Zdeněk Koubek’s story was deliberately buried, but there’s a perverse cruelty to this particular excavation. His internal world is rarely explored, with the script showing shockingly little empathy for Zdeněk as a person, let alone as a trans/intersex person. The play revels in his suffering and all but invites the audience to do the same. Long stretches are devoted to the cruelties inflicted upon him, most notably a sexual assault sequence that can be genuinely uncomfortable to sit through. Since so little time is given to Zdeněk’s internal world, all the audience is left with is a sadistic voyeurism as this character is tormented, humiliated, assaulted, and denigrated at every turn. The script seems fundamentally uninterested in its own protagonist’s thoughts.

Even the play’s framing device, a 1935 interview of Zdeněk conducted by Lída Merlínová (Alyssa Simon), rarely gives Zdeněk any space to say much of anything. The play focuses instead on Lída’s intellectual and romantic fascination with him, which is emblematic of the work’s attitude towards its protagonist: Zdeněk is the object of a discussion he is rarely allowed to contribute to.

Rounding out the supporting cast, Ethan Fox plays most of Zdeněk’s major tormentors. Fox is cartoonishly evil in every scene he’s in and every accent he switches between, most notably the Nazi-supporting Béd’a. His over-the-top performance is a wise choice given the intensity of certain scenes, helping to reduce their gratuitousness (although not eliminate it entirely). His physicality in particular is quite skillful, as is the direction of fight director JaneAnne Halter. Herschel Blatt is memorable as Kuba, Béd’a’s reluctant accomplice, as well as several other one-scene characters.

In this Czech play, a 1930s transgender/intersex athlete, long forgotten, is brought back to center stage. Yet one can’t help but be disappointed at how little this play actually has to say about its ostensible subject matter of professional sports, fascism, persecution, transgender and intersex people, or even Zdeněk himself. Excellent directing and compelling performances don’t save a cruel script. Zdeněk never gets his moment to speak. Instead, he rides off into the sunset to be forgotten again.

Blood, Sweat, and Queers (through June 15, 2025)

Truth International Theater Festival 2025

The Czech Center at the Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit https://www.rehearsalfortruth.org/program/blood-sweat-and-queers-live-theater

Running time: 87 minutes no intermission