On a recent visit to New York, your own Jonny had a gay, old time without ever leaving his theater seat. The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name is shrieking at the top of its lungs these days, from Off-off-Broadway to the Great White Way itself. Several of the shows Jonny saw inevitably will make their way to Chicago.
The big play on Broadway is Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, about a superslugger for the fictional New York Empires professional baseball team who comes out. The show is almost certain to dominate the non-musical Tony Award categories, and Greenberg is being talked of as a Pulitzer Prize winner. Leading a splendid ensemble cast (under the direction of Joe Mantello) are handsome, strapping Daniel Sunjata as slugger Darren Lemming, and former Chicago actor Denis O'Hare in a dazzling comic turn as Lemming's financial manager and friend.
Character actor O'Hare has compiled a lengthy resume of stage and screen successes since moving to New York a decade back, and is considered a Tony Award front runner. He's highly respected by the profession and has paid his dues, which will work in his favor among the Tony Award voters.
But the element of Take Me Out that makes it a succes de scandal is the copious quantity of full male nudity in the team's club house, culminating with a shower scene in which six Empires strip and lather. No shadows, no backs turned. Bright lights and downstage center with real soap and real water. No wonder those expensive orchestra seats are selling light hot cakes!
But Take Me Out isn't a nudie-sexploitation play. It's a substantial play of ideas leavened with sparkling comedy, irony and even satire. Author Greenberg has grown tremendously as a writer over the last decade, making us fortunate that Steppenwolf has latched onto his work. Their productions of Greenberg's Three Days of Rain and The Dazzle were elegant, and they soon will offer the regional premiere of Greenberg's latest, The Violet Hour. But don't look for Steppenwolf to tackle Take Me Out. If it does well at the Tony Awards, it should arrive here via a national tour.
A better bet for a local production is The Last Sunday in June, by Jonathan Tolins (author of the gay-themed The Twilight of the Golds). Jonny saw this show in a limited run at the Off-Broadway Rattlestick Theatre, but it's scheduled to reopen in mid-April at the larger Century Theatre. The title refers to the day of the annual Pride Parade in most cities, and it centers on gay friends who watch the parade from the windows of a New York apartment overlooking Christopher Street. There's the young'un, the older one, the HIV+ one, the muscle one and the self-loathing one all popping in on the hosts, a troubled 'married' couple. You know, the standard gay platoon.
Yes, the situation is a cliché and the characters are stereotypes, but Tolins' witty writing makes The Last Sunday a June a cut above the run-of-the-mill gay group play. In fact, Tolins makes fun of the standard-issue format of the play, so as to move beyond the formula. He even dares to provide a down ending for what is—for the most part—a comedy. Still, he's only partially successful. The characters are small and their concerns are petty, the action sometimes is forced, and—ultimately—Tolins has nothing original to say about gay men or gay culture, or the fragility of relationships, which is the root subject.
Still, The Last Sunday in June has substantial entertainment value, and is exactly the type of play Bailiwick often selects for its Pride Series (now called Out All Year). Also, Jonny was delighted to find two former Chicagoans in the cast, Jonathan F. McClain and Donald Corren. McClain worked here with the Eclipse, National Jewish and Writers theaters. Corren, whom old timers may remember as Cosmo White, performed here at the Goodman, St. Nicholas and Apollo theaters among others, and starred on Broadway in Torch Song Trilogy (replacing author/star Harvey Fierstein). Jonny was delighted to spend time catching up with Corren after the show.
Jonny caught up ever-so-briefly with another old chum, the ever-surprising Charles Busch, a Northwestern University graduate and who started his career in the Windy City at the old Le Pub and at Victory Gardens Theater. Well, everyone knows how well Chuck Busch has done as a writer and drag artist extraordinaire. Jonny was fortunate to see one of the final performances of Mr. Busch's Shanghai Moon, a 90-minute send-up of 1930's exotic movies.
Offstage, Charles is quiet, very modest, and not an inch over 5'6'. Onstage, he's the definition of glamour, brass, the snappy comeback, the double take, the drop-dead look, and the quivering lip. In other words, Busch is reborn as a film goddess, and one who towers over his leading men, thanks to spiked heels, mountainous wigs, and gowns of long line that make him look a mile high. In this case, Busch towers over the lusciously cute B. D. Wong, butching it up as Chinese warlord Gong Fei, who makes love to Busch's Lady Sylvia Allington, a heady mix of Mary Astor, Bette Davis, Dame Edna and Fanny Brice!
Produced by the Drama Dept., Shanghai Moon closed March 9, freeing Busch for work on a new screenplay, and a new adaptation of the Harold Arlen/Truman Capote musical, House of Flowers, opening June at the Pasadena Playhouse. For more info, go to www.CharlesBusch.com .
These three shows only scratched the surface of theater now on the boards in New York that's either gay-themed or imbued with gay sensibilities. Jonny didn't have time to see Chemistry Lab, a new play by Ben Alexander about two gay high school boys, or the revival of Landford Wilson's The Fifth of July, or Showtune, a new review of Jerry Herman songs, or Harvey Fierstein in drag in Hair Spray. Besides, one drag performer per New York visit probably is enough!
