Gays on Broadway - Ethan Mordn - Oxford Universy Prs

Contents:

• THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME
• WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE GREAT GAY PLAY? EVERYTHG.
• WHY IS THE THEATER SO MEANGFUL TO GAY PEOPLE?AN INTERVIEW WH JORDAN ROTH.
• AN EPIC NEW BROADWAY PLAY ON MORN GAY LIFE ASKS: N WE LOVE OURSELV?
• GAYS ON BROADWAY BY ETHAN MORDN REVIEW – STAGE WHISPERS
• GAYS ON BROADWAY
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
• GAY ON BROADWAY: THE BT QUEER AND GENRQUEER CHARACTERS

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTCric’s NotebookIn recent shows, ias of gayns are expandg, bg and disappearg all at WisemanI don’t know whether was bee my parents were jt generally open-md, or bee they had a specific, kdly yet mortifyg agenda, but one of the first Broadway plays they took me to, June of 1977, was way too gay for fort.

Some, like “A Strange Loop” and “Fat Ham, ” dramatize how the experience of racism amplifi that of homophobia, and vice fy expectatns by makg sexual orientatn a distctly sendary ncern among characters who “happen to be” gay or lbian, as “A Case for the Existence of God” and “At the Weddg. When a (male) love tert enters the picture, and they sg Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” as a duet, you feel somethg new has happened, as ntroversy melts to a blissful cloud of nonbary bubble is the equalizg, homogenizg fluence of pop culture at work — an fluence that some queer people unrstandably mistst.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE GREAT GAY PLAY? EVERYTHG.

Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” go further, makg the cross-pollatn of inty the prime source of s nflict, as the ma character nonts both the homophobia of his Black fay and the racism of his queer one. ) Its body, race and orientatn issu are left a kd of stalemate that suggts what might happen if a foundatnal gay play like “The Boys the Band” (which had only one Black character) were multiplied fun hoe mirrors ad fum.

That the Hamlet figure, lled Juicy, is Black and gay, wh an termtent csh on a Laert-like iend, suggts that the queer theme will domate, yet don’t; “Fat Ham” is really a play about Black masculy and, even more broadly, the vlent herance all men mt renounce. ” Beltran portrays a gay Black man hopg to adopt the young girl he’s been Klwich/The New York TimMy other favore queer plays of the past year likewise offer no bands; their gay characters (there are still far too few lbian on) operate as if their gayns were mostly ternal and pletely irrelevant. Hunter’s heartbreakg “A Case for the Existence of God, ” that turns out to be an illn, as a gay Black man, after fosterg a ltle girl for more than three years, fds his plan to adopt her undone at the last mute.

WHY IS THE THEATER SO MEANGFUL TO GAY PEOPLE?AN INTERVIEW WH JORDAN ROTH.

If there are subtle ways which their sexual inti affect their character or behavr, they were too subtle for me; miss a le or two and you may not even know that gayns is a part of their makp at mak sense plays about cris that threaten to oblerate a person entirely: genr, race, orientatn and all. Francis, the closeted llege stunt “Gemi, ” probably did; if he lived through AIDS, I expect he achieved full five-star gay privilege, plete wh marriage, children and Crate & Barrel chee boards. As print and majory shareholr Jujamcyn Theaters, he ntrols five Broadway ho, makg him the New York theater world’s third-biggt landlord, and as an openly gay man, he’s also one of the cy’s most proment out bsmen.

I spoke to him on June 1, jt after Calyn Jenner’s Vany Fair ver was revealed, about how the theatergog experience is changg, why theater n be pecially meangful to gay people, and whether Broadway is too reliant on the Tonys.

Jordan Barbour, Darryl Gene Dghtry Jr., Kyle Soller, Arturo Luís Soria and Kyle Harris ‘The Inherance’ (photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMa, 2019)The central theme of plays about ntemporary gay life—a lerature that n be traced back half a century to 1968’s “The Boys the Band”—has not been the trma of g out, the stggle for civil rights or the fight agast H. This quandary is obvly as relevant to straight dienc as to gay on, and fds eloquent if over-dulgent new exprsn “The Inherance, ” an epic two-part play now on s most basic level, Matthew Lopez’s play is a portra of lennial gay male life New York Cy, and is a picture both celebratory and utnary. Matthew Lopez’s play is a portra of lennial gay male life New York Cy, and is a picture both celebratory and bds them is the ual tangle of affy and mutual need, as well as an impossibly posh Upper Wt Si apartment, which Eric has hered thanks to rent ntrol.

AN EPIC NEW BROADWAY PLAY ON MORN GAY LIFE ASKS: N WE LOVE OURSELV?

Eric beiends Walter (Pl Hilton), a quiet, middle-aged gay man wh matter-of-factly harrowg tal of the closet and the early plague years of AIDS. (For one, Forster himself was a closeted gay man; his 1912 novel Mrice, about two men fdg happs together, was not published until after his ath, 1971. I hate to make the unavoidable parison to Tony Khner’s epochal “Angels Ameri, ” another two-part play on gay them; “The Inherance” fully serv nsiratn on s own terms.

GAYS ON BROADWAY BY ETHAN MORDN REVIEW – STAGE WHISPERS

It is the and Eric’s votn to hearg them out that lk “The Inherance” to a robt legacy of plays about what the gay experience n teach all about the steep st of love and the even steeper st of the failure to love. The heartbreakg drama tells the bgraphil story of celebrated graphic artist Alison Bechl as she disvers her sexual orientatn while tryg to unrstand how she relat to her father -- himself a closeted gay man who ms suici four months after she out. The edy tak place Pennsylvania 1973, where a young gay teen (Urie, narratn) is troduced to theater through his lol muny troupe, lead by the vivac Irene (LuPone).

GAYS ON BROADWAY

A morn sp on the tradnal weddg edy, “It Shoulda Been You” is the only mil on Broadway to feature a gay weddg, a lbian weddg and a straight weddg. It may seem strange given theatre’s reputatn for sexual licence, but the 20th century, gay men and lbians on Broadway had to spend most of their reers the closet.

It begs at the turn of the 20th century and culmat wh Tori and Lisa Kron’s mil Fun Home and the 2019 Broadway productn of The Inherance, Matthew Lopez’s six-and-a-half-hour gay revamp of Howards End (pendg on your viewpot, eher eply movg or Howards Endls)’s srcely the first survey of s kd.

Only on rare and trigugly dangero ocsns did homosexualy make to the text nversatnally through 120 years 218 pag means there’s ltle time for staed argument. Dpe the latter’s openns about his sexualy and the reputatn of his plays, Mordn pots out: “Williams’ outwardly gay characters are ually off-stage or ad.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

” And he also floats the ia that Noël Coward – the man he argu first ed the word gay the ntemporary sense onstage a lyric for his operetta Bter Sweet – was wrg a d gay relatnship when he brought a threateng first love back to a marriage Blhe dismissive and far om balanced, Mordn is strong on barely remembered wrers like lyricist-librettist John Latouche. And he’s ft about John Van Dten, once famo for turng Christopher Isherwood’s Berl stori to I Am a Camera which begat Cabaret, but who also wrote the cunng closet drama Bell, Book and Candle, ostensibly about wch livg 1950 Greenwich Village but whose real subject is clearly lbians and gay his groundbreakg 1981 book The Celluloid Closet, Vo Rso wrote that even until the 1960s, as far as Amerin cema was ncerned, “homosexualy was still somethg you did the dark or Europe, preferably both”.

GAY ON BROADWAY: THE BT QUEER AND GENRQUEER CHARACTERS

Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip, a risque edy set a gay bathhoe, was a popular sensatn when produced onstage 1973-1974, the era of gay liberatn and the sexual revolutn. The play, often dismissed by mastream crics but hailed as "funny, sexy, and important" by the gay prs, ran for 140 performanc off-Broadway, then toured to eight ci over ne months, and returned to Broadway starrg the legendary adult film star Casey Donovan the lead role. Dpe s unprecented succs and acclaim, the play was not officially published until wh the but publitn of the script of the play, this edn clus a foreword by Jordan Schildcrout tled "Tubstrip and The Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberatn", which exam the signifince of the play as one of a wave of erotic gay plays (most of them fotten or lost) that emerged between 1969 and 1974.

He went on to have a major reer gay male pornography, directg numero award-wng films between 1989 and 2007, such as More of a Man, Flh & Blood, Dream Team, and Schildcrout is Associate Profsor of Theatre & Performance at SUNY Purchase. Lee Barton, reviewg the play for The Advote, lled "funny, sexy, and important, " but wonred whether mastream crics uld "tolerate anythg gay that is so open and healthy. One San Francis review praised Tubstrip as an exemplar of gay liberatn, remarkg, "When is the last time you walked out of a play or film about gays and felt good?

In wrg , Crowley had liberately taken up the challenge tossed down by the theater cric Stanley Kffmann, who a 1966 New York Tim say headled “Homosexual Drama and Its Disguis” asked why that era’s most famo gay playwrights — meang Edward Albee, Tennsee Williams and William Inge — didn’t wre about themselv and leave straights alone.