It wasn’t so long ago that gay people in plays were tragic figures who were struggling to come out or battling AIDS or sassy wiseacres who provided comic relief. But we now live in a different pop- cultural world, where a growing number of high schools have gay-straight alliances, rock stars like R.E.M’s Michael Stipe are openly gay and perhaps the most beloved character on the cult HBO crime drama “The Wire” was Omar, a stick-up artist, equally devoted to robbing drug dealers and romancing his male lovers.
Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a different kind of gay character popping up in new plays too. From Clarice Bernstein, the beleaguered presidential speechwriter played by Laurie Metcalf in David Mamet’s November; to Howie, the teenager who is totally unself-conscious about his sexuality in Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate, these gay characters are the most stable and self-assured people in their shows. And now comes Adam Bock’s The Drunken City with two gay characters who are not only the anchors for their flighty friends but also of this meditation on love and marriage among today’s tewentysomethings.
I got a kick out of Bock’s last play, The Receptionist, and so I decided to see this new one without knowing a thing about it. My buddy Bill, always game for a theater adventure, met me at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, one of the new spaces that Playwrights Horizons operates on 42nd Street, where The Drunken City is playing through April 20. The one-act show, which centers around six young singles who meet, hook up and fall out on a drunken night on the town, is slight but appropriately giddy and Bill and I had a good time.
Bock specializes in snappy dialog that sounds like the kind of thing that people, or at least I, always wish they had said. The performances by the good-looking, interracial cast, lead by Cassie Beck's amusingly conflicted bride-to-be, is yet more proof that New York City is currently overflowing with a bumper crop of talented young actors. And David Korins’ clever set design, aided by Matthew Richards’ nimble lighting and Bart Fasbender’s smart sound design, create an evocative cityscape.
But what really struck me is the way the gay guys are portrayed. They don’t have swishy, stereotypical jobs—one’s a dentist, the other a baker. They’re comfortable hanging out with straight friends. Their concerns are ones we all share: how to care for our friends, where to find love and how to be true to one’s self. Having gay people portrayed just as people, now that's truly intoxicating.
Everyone is always talking about the need to get younger people to see more theater. But the folks at the Roundabout Theatre Company have clearly decided to do something about it. Last fall, they introduced Access Roundabout, an audience development program that sets aside about 2,000 tickets for people between the ages of 18 and 35 at just $20 each, and $10 seats for all first preview performances.
But cheap seats work best when there’s something on stage that people really want to see. The Roundabout has an answer for that too: Roundabout Underground, a new series that showcases the works of young playwrights in full-scale productions in the company’s new 60-seat Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, located in the basement of the Laura Pels Theatre on West 46th Street. Now, the Roundabout’s next challenge will be to find plays equal to the black box’s inaugural production, Speech & Debate, a sassy comedy about free speech, online privacy and sexual identity, written by the 27 year-old playwright Stephen Karam. Speech & Debate is smart and funny and, unlike so many plays that focus on the problems of middle-aged folks, it speaks directly to the concerns of young people. And there were lots of them in the audience the night my husband K and I saw the show.
My friend Bill had seen Speech & Debate right after it first opened, back in October, and told me I shouldn’t miss it. He also told me, which the show doesn’t advertise, that seating is open so it’s best to get there early to get a good spot. Because K and I are the kind of people who tend to arrive everywhere so early that we usually have to walk around the block to burn up some time, there were only two other people sitting in the downstairs lobby when we got there. We bought soft drinks at the lobby bar, sat at one of its round café-style tables and people-watched as our fellow audience members arrived. The early-birds weren’t at all what we expected—mainly the same grey-heads that you see at most theaters. In fact, when the first twentysomething couple arrived, they did a double take they were so surprised to find themselves in the company of what seemed to be an AARP rally. But then just before the doors of the theater opened, the black clad, nose-pierced set began to flow in.
K and I got front row seats, which made us feel almost a part of the show, which takes place largely in high school classrooms. Speech & Debate signaled that it was different even before it started; the customary “Turn off your cell phones” announcement wasn’t spoken but appeared in laser print on the set’s blackboard—line after line of the message, written as though it were a detention room assignment.
But there is nothing punitive about the show. Speech & Debate’s plot involves three high-school misfits who meet over the internet and become involved in one another’s secrets. It’s longer than it needs to be, some speeches are overwritten and some debates just peter out but Karam’s distinctive voice emerges through it all and the performers, particularly Susan Steele, a scene-stealing dynamo who reminded me of a young Stockard Channing, keep you from wriggling restlessly in your seat. And it was really nice to see really young actors (at least one is still in college) playing young people in a play dealing with the concerns of young people. “This is the greatest play I’ve ever seen,” the young woman sitting behind me told her companion with the kind of emphatic passion that is endemic to her age. And that is just the kind of passion that the theater needs more of.
We oldsters liked it too. I’m already looking forward to Karam’s next play. This one is running through Feb. 24. Go see it if you can. Or better yet, if you know some young people between the ages of 16 and 29, buy a ticket and send them.
It wasn’t so long ago that gay people in plays were tragic figures who were struggling to come out or battling AIDS or sassy wiseacres who provided comic relief. But we now live in a different pop- cultural world, where a growing number of high schools have gay-straight alliances, rock stars like R.E.M’s Michael Stipe are openly gay and perhaps the most beloved character on the cult HBO crime drama “The Wire” was Omar, a stick-up artist, equally devoted to robbing drug dealers and romancing his male lovers. 
