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| David Adkins as John Jeckyll; photo: Kevin Sprague |
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Opening the mainstage season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival is an edgy, human comedy about eight gay men who gather at a country house over three holiday weekends in the summer of 1994. Two of them have AIDS. Two of them have sustained a lengthy, committed relationship. Two of them are ideal misfits. Two of them are twins. Two of them are single and without much hope of a sincere lovelife. Two of them are handicapped, although in very different ways. Two of them are dancers. Two of them...well, in this play there are always two of them, even two of them in the closet, in a manner of speaking. McNally, in this superb play, is working through the combinations of human possibility and his exploration of these wildly varied affinities are the key to the emotional turmoil we witness, we empathize with and ultimately experience.
Stereotypical characters abound and with them come the belly laughs. Written with an almost chilling naivete this examination of a particular quadrant of humanity has become symbolic of the larger race of man. It matters less than it once did that these men are all gay, and more than half of them are in some area of show business. They represent the real world in ways that are different from the world they inhabit. They express universal sentiments about marriage, fidelity, work, the social circles that encroach on our lives, the ladder that needs to be climbed in a career, the almost unexplainable sympathy that overtakes us for the handicapped, the horror of any premature death and the difficulties between siblings who cannot come to grips with family favoritism. These are just a few of the elements that are engaged in this play. So go for the fun, if you must, but listen for the revelations, too.
Anders Cato has staged a very traditional production of this play with a cast of attractive and sensitive players who cavort, sometimes nude, in a way that provides us with a view of intimacy and freedom that can only happen among close friends. The casual aspects of the play are delicious under Cato’s watch. He works on a severely, almost dangerously difficult, raked stage consisting of four (three of them stage-wide) platforms. With the addition of a dynamic rear cyclorama, the visual aspects by Hugh Landwehr (set) and Jeff Davis (lighting) provide both the open air of this Dutchess County home and the intimate spaces of the house and the minds of the participants. Davis defines those spaces with clearly delineated day and night vistas, and he also manages to create walls, textures and subtle imagery with his sensitive colors and patterns. The two men make a fine team, another pairing in this play about pairs.
The cast feels, looks, sounds almost ideal. Romain Frugé is Gregory, the host, a choreographer reaching the physical breaking point in his dance career. His lover, a blind hunk named Bobby, is played with the grace and poise of a man who knows his place in this world by Matthew Wilkas. James Lloyd Reynolds is Arthur, the uptight half of a long-term partnership and Jonathan Fried is his partner, Perry. David Adkins plays the British Jeckyll twins, John and James, the evil and the good, a pair obviously named for the original split personality. Ricky Fromeyer is young, eager, career-oriented dancer Ramon Fornos (initials optional here obviously) and the comic-relief character who turns into the most beautifully romantic man imaginable, Buzz, is played brilliantly by Stephen DeRosa. This is a handsome ensemble. They play handsomely as well.
The tender trap of this play is the unforeseen romance of Buzz and a Jeckyll. By the time we’ve started to fall in love with these characters they have created their commitment. We know the difficulties they will encounter; those are predictable here. What we don’t know is the darkness and the treachery that comes in such an affair. McNally gives us a moment, near the end of the third act - yes a third act - where futures are explored and we learn what we don’t need to know. It is a touching sequence in which all of the participants -actors and designers and director - bare their souls before us.
"Other people are as imperfect as we are." Once it’s said, once heard, the sentiment brings in the entire audience. No one can feel apart from these eight men, no one can truly feel much different from them. That is one of the great strengths of this play.
With the exception of the consistent mis-pronunciation of "Manderley," the stately country home of Maxim DeWinter and his misfit bride in the book and film of Daphne DuMaurier’s "Rebecca" as "Mandalay" the far-eastern capital which has a much heralded road to it, the company does well by the script. Barring one bizarre error on Adkins part when he seemingly forgot which twin he was playing, the harmony and rhythm of the author’s script emerges as a flawless piece of classical music, ballet music actually; the use of a section of Tchaikowsky’s "Swan Lake" is both hilarious and effective.
Some people may think that a gay play is inappropriate for a summer theater in this region. I urge you to see it and decide for yourself if this is just a gay play about AIDS or a universal statement about life as it is lived by almost everyone, a life lived in the company of loved ones, good friends and those odd, unavoidable relationship we can’t seem to live without anymore. Good theater is good life.
◊06/23/2007◊
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