You know you're in for a truly original evening of gay-themed theater when the show opens with a Judy Garland female impersonator badly lip synching to "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows." Judy Garland? Rainbows? I don't know, maybe it's just me, but haven't I seen those signposts to gay life somewhere before?
And herein lies the heart of the problem of Diann Wilson world premiere play, Prism: Russell gives us nothing new or fresh to look at in her montage of gay activism, spread out over the last half of the 20th Century. We have unsympathetic wives married to gay men, mean, harassing cops, drag queens and disco music. We have angry lesbians and silly, effeminate gay men. In short, this "tapestry" is old and frayed around the edges.
However, Prism just nearly missed being a good play, perhaps even a great one. And it did so not because of the lack of original characterization or themes, but because it was inconsistent and too broad. Prism wants to do so much, and show us so much that it gets wrapped up in its own ambition and stumbles. If the focus had been sharper on these "snapshots" of gay history, we might have something worth looking at. And the focus was almost there: most of Prism is the coming out story of Tony, who begins as a closeted young husband in the 1950s and moves forward through the years as he finds his way as a proud gay man, loving, uncompromising, and willing to fight for acceptance and freedom. Tony's story of love and loss, set against a backdrop of changing times and mores, could have been an extremely compelling vehicle. And playwright Wilson is almost there; she should have stuck strictly to Tony's story, letting him be the prism through which the larger story is filtered. Instead Wilson includes extraneous details like a scene with a woman telling us how Matthew Shepard's "out" homosexuality didn't fit in Laramie, a scene of a homophobic New York riot cop ( badly played by Steve Misetic ) , and the afore-mentioned Judy Garland. Keep it human and the larger panorama will take care of itself.
The production itself has some things to recommend it: Randy Goetz' Tony is a layered, sympathetic character. Shana Goodsell, as his wife, Angela, is also good, adding more depth to her character than the playwright gave her. As the fledgling Mattachine Society, Mitch Hudson, Brook Robertson, and Christopher Ellis all turn in solid performances. Director Scott Olsen's staging is solid and deft, in spite of the fact that the production has a hurried quality, as if it could have benefited greatly from a lot more rehearsal time.