Playwright: Stephen Karam. At: American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron St. Tickets: 773-409-4125 or www.atcweb.org; $38-$43. Runs through: March 9
Stephen Karam's 2011 drama Sons of the Prophet can be labeled a "gay play" merely by the fact that it contains a few gay characters. But this award-winning play doesn't limit itself with the topics of coming out or relationships that drive so many "gay plays" of the past.
Instead, Sons of the Prophet merely presents its main gay characters as people who happen to be gay, facing challenges with either congenital or recently onset health issues, and of the mortality of themselves and their loved ones.
Sons of the Prophet focuses on two gay brothers from a Lebanese-American Christian family in Scranton, Pa. Joseph ( Tyler Ravelson ) is a runner with Olympic aspirations, although he's forced to scramble for health insurance by seeking employment with a disgraced publisher named Gloria ( a wonderfully and annoyingly eccentric performance by Natalie West ). Younger brother Charles ( Michael Weingand ) is obsessive about geography, and he was born missing one ear, which proves fascinating to anyone who hears about his many surgeries to construct a new one.
Joseph and Charles are thrown into an unenviable public grieving process when a mascot prank by a local high school football player ( Tony Santiago ) leads to the death of their father. They suddenly find themselves taking care of their religiously fanatic Uncle Bill ( Will Zahrn ), whose health is rapidly declining. And despite the goading of publisher Gloria and an ambitious and manipulative TV reporter named Timothy ( Greg Matthew Anderson ), Joseph and Charles resist the push to exploit their personal tragedies as a way to bolster their finances.
Although Karam imposes a number of dramatic and tragic circumstances on his characters, that doesn't mean that he's averse to making Sons of the Prophet extremely funny, too. This push and pull between the comic and tragic is just one of the many wonderful things about Sons of the Prophet, which keeps you laughing even as it highlights a number of frightening aspects of everyone's inevitable death.
American Theater Company's Chicago premiere of Sons of the Prophet is a masterful one under the direction of artistic director PJ Paparelli ( who also realized acclaimed productions of Karam's other works like Speech and Debate and columbinus ). Every detail of the production is fine tuned, from the chilly and depressed look of William Boles wood-paneled sets, to the casting of minor characters so vividly and hilariously played by Carin Silkaitis and Marilynn Bogetich.
Sons of the Prophet also gives actor Tyler Ravelson a glorious chance to show his great dramatic skills in a leading role rather than a supporting one. Ravelson gives a polished and emotionally contained performance that shows Joseph struggling to maintain a positive facade, even as his hopes and dreams rapidly fall apart.
So call Sons of the Prophet a "gay play" if you mustbut it's really a universal one about the human condition.