Eddie Collins in Twilight of the Golds. Playwright: Jonathan Tolins. At: Apple Tree Theater, 1850 Green Bay, Highland Park . Phone: 847-432-4335; $38-$48
Through Nov. 11
The scientific community is a long way off from discovering if there is a 'gay gene' or a biological cause for homosexuality. But that hasn't stopped us from speculating that such a discovery would bring either greater acceptance—or a final solution-type push to fix or eradicate anyone with same-sex inclinations.
This debate is what spurred Queer as Folk writer Jonathan Tolins to pen his ham-fisted and semi-dated 1993 Broadway drama Twilight of the Golds, now being revived by Apple Tree Theater. If you think the title sounds deliberately close to Richard Wagner's final Ring Cycle opera Götterdämmerung ( Twilight of the Gods in translation ) , you would unfortunately be correct.
Tolins symbolically apes Wager's operas of the corrupt Norse gods' destruction and subsequent cleansing of the earth to aggrandize his own drama, which is actually more like a poorly written what-if TV movie-of-the-week. Oh yeah, Twilight of the Golds was, in fact, turned into a cable TV movie with Brendan Fraiser and Jennifer Beals in 1997.
The play explores how expectant Jewish New York yuppie couple Rob Stein ( Steven Marzolf ) and his wife, Suzanne Gold-Stein ( Elise Kauzlaric ) , deal with futuristic medical technology that shows all biological and genetic signs suggesting that their son will grow up to be 'like David,' Suzanne's stereotypical opera-loving gay brother ( Eddie Collins ) .
The news sends the whole family into a tailspin, including Suzanne's parents, Walter ( Larry Wiley ) and Phyllis Gold ( Brigid Duffy ) , who already had to deal with raising a gay son. Suzanne and Rob weigh whether or not to abort, which causes the close-knit family to rupture.
This issue is certainly an important one to ponder, especially given that Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist James Watson, the same geneticist who suggested years ago that women should be able to abort gay children, made recent headlines with racist genetic comments toward Africans. But the script of Twilight of the Golds is just inconsistent when it comes to its shallow and self-absorbed characters ( it's also unclear whether David is HIV-positive, which would explain some of the more insensitive family comments ) . The script also hasn't aged well, especially with 1980s Wall Street insider trader Ivan Boesky being used as a punch line.
All this could be partially forgiven if director Tim Gregory had assembled a stellar cast at Apple Tree Theatre. Unfortunately, the substandard dramatic material defeats this game and slightly miscast ensemble who can't convincingly plumb the depths of the characters' hidden biases that get blurted out ( except for maybe Collins as David ) .
Twilight of the Golds is clearly a flawed piece of theater. But at least it gets people thinking and talking about what they might do in that situation and urges you to take sides.
