Playwright: Steven Fales
At: Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 883-1090; $25
Runs through: Jan. 16
As we waited for the play to start on this snowy night, it sounded like every audience member within my hearing range was engaged in sharing some tidbit of information regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, sometimes abbreviated LDS—their practice of polygamy ( no longer true ) , their vast wealth ( probably the richest church in America ) , their implacable serenity ( the Osmonds—'nuff said ) , their stubborn insularity ( searching for a Promised Land amid social ejection and nomadic privation makes for a wariness toward strangers ) and their relentless tribalism ( opposing anything perceived as antithetical to the welfare of The Family ) .
Yes, everybody seemed to know SOMETHING about the Mormons. In American plays, Protestants are never Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Mennonites or Unitarians, but Baptists of the Jerry Falwell, not the Jimmy Carter, variety. And in GAY American plays, they are most often Mormons, as we call the followers of Joseph Smith and his best-known disciple, Brigham Young. So what could be more logical than for an authentic Salt Lake City-dwelling specimen of this mysterious sect to take to the stage and set the record straight?
Not the BIG record, you understand. Despite having been formally excommunicated from his brethren for the sin of homosexuality, Steven Fales is no secular humanist-thumping crusader. Early in the play, he speaks of wanting to tell his children—when they come of age, of course—how their father did his best to live according to his community's values, delving therapies both sanctioned and scurrilous before coming to accept his yearnings as an ambivalence ordained by a deity greater than any ecclesiastical court. In other words, this is HIS story, not ours, and in telling it honestly and candidly, he provides us an insider's view into one of society's most high-profile and misunderstood subcultures.
As dramatic narrative, Fales' autobiographical yarn could use some editing. The progress of his descent into the sybaritic Babylon of New York's escort trade is unlikely to shock the jaded urban patrons frequenting the Bailiwick Arts Center. On the other hand, Fales' confession includes a moment of self-revelation that drew gasps from spectators long inured to the sight of exposed flesh.