Gay plays usually fall into three categories: the coming-out
story, the AIDS drama, the cri de couer for acceptance from the wider society...or from the self. So I was intrigued
when I heard about I Could Say More, which bills itself as the tale of a modern
family, centered around the long-together-but-recently-married couple Carl and
Drew, their adopted teen son and the friends and relatives who visit them at a
beach house in the Hamptons.
I thought it might be kind of like Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart or Love!
Valour! Compassion!, only without
the underlying existential angst. But it turns out that angst, or at least the
right kind of angst, is useful when it comes to making a sturdy play.
Playwright Chuck Blasius has stocked his tale with plenty of
anxieties and many of them are ripe for dramatic exploration: the gay couple
struggling to figure out what marriage means for them, the challenge of romantic
love between a gay man and a straight woman, the adolescent confusions of a
straight kid raised by gay parents.
But Blasius, who directed the play and stars
in it, doesn’t develop any of those themes. He does include a few nice speeches and an audience-pleasing
supply of bitchy lines (plus a few groaners) that keep things moving
along. But he never makes it clear where it's all supposed to be moving toward.
Story lines are picked up and dropped, characters behave one way and then another without apparent reason, except for the overused crutch of too much drink. Then, after almost two and a half hours, the play simply stops. Ironically, the only people who seem to have reached any kind of resolution are the sole hetero couple.
The production, particularly Clifton Chadick’s comfy-looking set, is nicely put together and although the acting is uneven, there were some nuanced turns by Keith McDermott and Monique Vukovic as two of the houseguests and Brandon Smalls as the son (click here to watch the cast talk about the show). But these parts don’t add up to a satisfying whole.
My intrepid theatergoing buddy Bill and I happened to attend Monday’s opening night performance at the Hudson Guild Theatre and so the audience was filled with folks eager to be supportive. But although they whooped when each member of the nine-person cast took a bow at the curtain call, most of them looked just as confused by what we'd just seen as Bill and I were.
I don’t necessarily need, or even want, a play to spell out everything for me but it doesn’t really work when one just throws a bunch of stuff at you. In the end, I Could Say More is just as frustratingly opaque as its doesn't-say-anything title.
Story lines are picked up and dropped, characters behave one way and then another without apparent reason, except for the overused crutch of too much drink. Then, after almost two and a half hours, the play simply stops. Ironically, the only people who seem to have reached any kind of resolution are the sole hetero couple.
The production, particularly Clifton Chadick’s comfy-looking set, is nicely put together and although the acting is uneven, there were some nuanced turns by Keith McDermott and Monique Vukovic as two of the houseguests and Brandon Smalls as the son (click here to watch the cast talk about the show). But these parts don’t add up to a satisfying whole.
My intrepid theatergoing buddy Bill and I happened to attend Monday’s opening night performance at the Hudson Guild Theatre and so the audience was filled with folks eager to be supportive. But although they whooped when each member of the nine-person cast took a bow at the curtain call, most of them looked just as confused by what we'd just seen as Bill and I were.
I don’t necessarily need, or even want, a play to spell out everything for me but it doesn’t really work when one just throws a bunch of stuff at you. In the end, I Could Say More is just as frustratingly opaque as its doesn't-say-anything title.
No comments:
Post a Comment