"It's sort of a meta musical," says actor Nate Dunaway, who plays former governor Rick Perry in the satirical musical Young Greg Abbott. "There's a great band led by King Amy, and she's this wonderful fiddle player. She's sort of omnipotent throughout. She provides facts and context and makes jokes. And it's also sort of modeled off Wizard of Oz."
The musical, which is written and directed by Brently Heilbron (of Fragile Rock fame), follows current Texas governor Greg Abbott as a young man in the 1980s on an imaginary journey to meet then-current Texas governor Mark White. "He really wants to see Mark White," Dunaway explains, "so he sort of goes on this Dorothy-into-Oz journey, where he meets all these Republican figures, and they all teach him horrible things."
Dunaway is by now a veteran Young Greg Abbott performer, having already played Perry in the 2024 staging of the musical. New to the updated 2026 version is actor Max Green, who takes over the title role originated by Heilbron. As an actor, did he find it challenging to find the humanity in a character he disagrees with politically?
"That's interesting that you say that, because one of his lines is, 'can you humanize me?' It's just like kind of an overarching theme of the show, is whether or not you can actually sympathize with Greg Abbott," Green says. "Um, yeah, I don't. I mean, I'm not a big fan of him. I don't think I'd be a part of this production if I was."
Dunaway says he enjoys playing Perry. "I've gotten to crawl into the disturbing skin of Rick Perry, which is quite fun," he says. "With Rick, we both have a flair for the theatrical. There's some notes of ballet, there's some Fosse in there. There's some fun stuff. Like the idea of sort of the fabulous singing cowboy is in there. There's some Elvis, lots of Elvis. Yeah… I identify with him in that respect. He's very fun to play. I feel like politicians, you know, they're mostly lawyers and lawyers are all actors. They all want to be actors at the end of the day."
When he first performed in Young Greg Abbott two years ago, Dunaway says he didn't expect to hear so much booing from the audience, though he immediately realized those boos were directed not at the performers onstage but at the characters they were playing. "I mean, it was a delightful surprise to us all," he recalls. "I think the sort of vitriol the crowd came in with… and people told us it was very cathartic to boo and to hiss and to finally sort of get some of their sort of hatred for the horrible Republican machine out. But yeah, people, I think once they realized it was that sort of show, they loved it. And we loved it."
As he prepares to make his debut as young Greg Abbott, Green is looking forward to hearing some of those boos firsthand. "I'm just really excited for audience reactions," he says. "I want our concessions stand to have like tomatoes and stuff, but i don't know if Trinity Street Playhouse would appreciate that so much. The boos, I imagine, feel like cheers in their own right, you know? It's like the show works."
'Young Greg Abbott' runs October 1-3 at Trinity Street Playhouse.
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