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COUNTERCULTURE
Different Entertaining; Lacks Depth
A critic I admire once wrote that he always
felt badly when forced to comment adversely
on young theater companies, or on plays
written from minority points of view. He
understood how badly we need them both, and
how such companies invariably seem to take
the greatest artistic and financial risks despite
having the most to lose, including their very
existence. I would like to ask the forbearance
of readers to consider a mixed response to a
production that, weaknesses accounted for,
should not be missed. Different takes chances,
has its rewards, and is worth our attention.
I went to see Different with a high degree of
anticipation. The advance press had been
promising: SAME'S first musical would be a
21-song musical drama using elements of
concert, cabaret and commentary to dramatize
key passages in the life of a "gay Everyman."
The story would follow Sonny Robinson from
his lonely childhood, through his adult
satisfactions and disappointments, to his
eventual confrontation with AIDS.
The lights went down and an ensemble of
attractive, high-energy actors/singers/dancers
commanded the stage at once. The show itself
is constructed in a familiar but pleasingly
elliptical style. The plot is built around the lead
character,Sonny, and the milieu through which
he moves, which serves as material for some of
the brightly written and beautifully performed
songs we hear.
Some of this material is wittily, if
superficially, on target: the humiliation certain
children feel at being chosen last, if at all, for
grade-school recess games; the discomfort of
courtship rites played out in a parked car where
one couple sits chastely in the front seat while
waiting out the steamy goings-on behind them;
and the friend who drops by emblazoned with
news that he has met someone special who has
left his full name and phone number on a
matchbook for future reference.
Mostly we watch episodes depicting how
Sonny lives his life. We follow him on his
introduction to gay society and culture by his
first visit to a bar (gateway to friends in order to
construct gay social interaction outside the bar).
And we're at his side when he meets Neal, a
sympathetic and courtly bartender (also a
frustrated writer) who eventually becomes his
lover and housemate. In one of the
production's finer moments, we watch them
blithely fold clothes from a laundry basket, and
sense there's nowhere else in the world they'd
rather be.
Different has been called "probably the
most commercial project yet undertaken" by
SAME, and perhaps that's part of the problem
with it I found it conventional, so concerned to
be generically representational that it somehow
becomes neutered. It's also a melodramatic
piece of work, especially in Sonny's death
scene and in Neal's scenes of grieving (poorly
written by Different's authors, Patrick
Hutchinson and Dan Pruitt, and badly
overacted, respectively, by David Willis and G.
Burrow Holmes, neither of whom, when he's
not dancing, knows what to do with his hands
or how to move with ease onstage).
It's also a very WASPy view of gay life.
And the result is a thin, distended series of
songs and sketches, some brightly written and
acted, but without much depth. It simply tells
us nothing we don't already know about gays in
American society and culture. If the
production brings tears from some members of
the audience, I'd guess the emotional baggage
we all now bring into the theatre cm account of
lost loved ernes is more likely the true source of
those tears. We only need to be tapped lightly.
Any play that now addresses the topic of
AIDS, in my view, risks being charged with
pandering lest it tread with great care and
delicacy; or the courage of an artist, one who is
willing to face horror and the mystery of death
head-on, and to evoke the holiness of last days
when before us lies all the secrets to the
universe or extinction everlasting.
>In terms of addressing issues such as these,
Different simply doesn't exist. But it does have
the pleasures afforded by a cast who can sing
and dance.
Standouts among the good, conviction-filled
cast include Buddy Montgomery, whose voice
seems to spin gold in the air; G. Scott Suprina,
who underplays beautifully a married man who
understands perfectly the risks he's taking by
following his heart, and who, in his ensemble
scenes, moves his wrists, hands, entire body, to
witty comic effect; and Doug Lothes, who
stops the show and struts away with it in his
breast pocket in his matchbook number.
Different's lighting and sets were designed
by John Williams; the score, an unusually good
one, is by Patrick Hutchinson.
On The Way Up
Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square, by
Stan Leventhal, Edward-William Publishing,
Austin, Texas, 1988: paperback $8.95.
Not quite two decades have passed since the
Stonewall Riot of 1969, a convenient starting
date for the gay rights movement Even this
short time has seen tremendous change in the
gay press, which has matured from a stage of
newsletters, political tracts, vanity publications,
and ephemeral literary journals. In the field of
fiction writing, there is already a sense of a
second generation, a new crop of names,
producing a broader range of stories and
novels.
Stan Leventhal belongs to this new breed.
After some years of journalism, writing on
music for the New York Native, he has just
published his first novel, Mountain Climbing
in Sheridan Square. Set in Manhattan, where
Leventhal has lived for several years, the book
takes as its central metaphor the tangled
intersection of streets at the heart of Greenwich
Village, where a statue of the Civil War
General Philip Sheridan presides over a small
park. The confusing geography of this part of
the city, the conflux of diverse people, and the
relief provided by the few trees—all of this
stands for a certain way of life. It is life in the
big city, as lived by creative young people,
some of whom are gay. A friend of mine, a
young play director who holds body and soul
together by typing, read the book in one gulp
and exclaimed: "This is my life!"
As with most first novels, Mountain
Climbing draws heavily from the author's own
life. But Leventhal has omitted most of his
childhood and school days. The time span
covered is the past four years, fixing the novel
firmly in the 1980's, the age of AIDS and
Ronald Reagan. Leventhal has also abandoned
A Lesbian Photo Album: The Lives of
Seven Lesbian Feminists, by Cathy Cade,
Waterwomen Books, 3022 Ashbrook Court,
Oakland, California 94601. 1987: paperback
$14.95.
If you are a Lesbian who also calls herself a
Feminist, this glossy "album" containing over
100 captioned photographs and strong text is
for you. Cathy Cade has gathered up the
friends of her friends and has produced an
interesting assemblage of homey snapshots,
pithy revelation from the women themselves
and intimate photography. If you are a lesbian
who does not care whether or not "feminist"
follows her name and has enough to do just to
keep herself alive, you may be put off by the
price of this book and its strictly West Coast
orientation. In any case, any woman who has
the opportunity to contemplate the faces in the
photographs and to savor the various flavors
evoked by the women's words will inevitably
leave enriched. I thought I knew what it was
all about until I sat down with A Lesbian
Photo Album.
Cade explains:
"The photographs in this book are of
two kinds: those supplied by the
women...showing their lives from childhood
to about 1980 and those we made together in
1980 to 1982. The pictures from our growing-
up years were selected to tell our individual
stories and also to depict the similarities and
differences of our backgrounds."
Yes, Cade's "album" is indeed diverse, but I
cringe at the worn out and weary devise where
"one of these" is chosen and then "one of
those" - a Mexican woman, a physically-
challenged woman, a big woman, a poor
woman.... Nevertheless, I cannot deny that
these intentional choices make the book as
powerful and penetrating as it is. I welcome
a straightforward narrative in favor of a non
linear series of short episodes. This technique,
a bit hand to follow at first, allows him to juggle
past and present, and to compare scenes simply
by setting them side by side. The effect is like
that of a film documentary, where we see real
people, close up.
What holds the book together is the
narrator's voice, consistent throughout. It is
plain and unaffected, and popular, in the sense
of coming from the people. It is so unobtrusive
that it nearly disappears-an achievement for
any writer, and a refreshing change from the
self-conscious style of earlier gay writers, such
as Andrew Holleran and Edmund White.
More substantial than his voice, though, is
Leventhal's program. He has turned his back
on the tradition of gay despair—the hopeless
love affair, the hostile family, the sad suicide—
and invented a new ideal. He shows us gay
men in happy couples, who babysit their
friends' children, and who work hard at their
careers. They are middle class, but hardly
"yuppies". They have learned the value of
friendship. This is the keynote of the second
generation in gay fiction: the integration of gay
life back into the mainstream.
The character Amos represents the old way.
From fun-loving New Orleans, Amos works as
a waiter, cheats on his lover, does too much
cocaine, and eventually fades from view. A
hazard of dwelling solely in the here and now,
of course, is an apparent lack of depth.
Leventhal can't understand Amos, nor can he
forgive him. Likewise, the death of another
character, Lorenzo, is told so abruptly that it
seems offhand.
Still, Leventhal deserves every chance for
success, as does his publisher, Edward-
William. The book is handsomely printed and
bound, a tangible advance over earlier gay
presses. Without question, Leventhal is on to
something, and he may well climb to the top of
his chosen mountain.
the day when Feminist effort culminates in the
visual variety among women becoming less of a
spectacular issue than the unseen aspects of our
minds and hearts.
The one distracting feature of A Lesbian
Photo Album is the "historical introduction" by
Lois R. Helmbold. Cade's introduction, which
precedes Helm bold's, is quite effective in
providing the impetus necessary to send the
reader hungrily into the text. The perspective
offered by Helmbold is five pages too long and
seems to be yet another elitist indication that the
words of "common" women simply could not
stand alone without the interjection of a
Feminist scholar. Though written well, the
impersonal seven-page second introduction adds
little to the intention or thrust of the book.
Overall, Cathy Cade has a good product
The arrangement of the photographs in addition
to the skillfully edited interviews of the women
are powerful. Cathy Cade has birthed a baby to
be proud of.
-Terri L.Jewell
SAME Presents....
A series of events at
Seven Stages Theater
March 16th at 8:00 PM
DeDe Vogt, in a rare solo
appearance, opens for
The Angela Motter Band
March 22nd&23rd at 8:00PM
Politically Incorrect Theater with
Doug Lothes and friends.
March 26th&27th at 5:30 PM and
March 27th -30th at 8:00PM
Ships, a love story by Bill Bagwell
Tickets $5.00 at the door
584-2104 for info
-Terry Francis
Death of a Legend
Los Angeles - Divine, pictured here in a 1983 performance at The Saint in Atlanta, died in his sleep
in Los Angeles on March 7,1988. Introduced as the "filthiest person alive" in the 1972 film Pink
Flamingos, Divine, whose real name was Harris Glenn Milstead, most recently starred in
Hairspray. The authorities are currently looking into the cause of death, which was temporarily
identified as asphyxiation. Photo by Gerald Jones.
- Robert Boucheron
Picture Ourselves
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