Some Men
Written by Terrence McNally
Directed by David Zak and Derek Van Barham
at Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge (map)
thru Sept 14 | tickets: $20-$30 | more info
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Entertaining travelogue through gay male history
Pride Films and Plays presents
Some Men
Review by John Olson
The first words heard in the film version of Mart Crowley’s seminal gay play The Boys in the Band are “times have changed” – in the verse to Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” sung over the opening credits. Crowley’s play was arguably the first mainstream production of a play written by a gay man, concerning gay men, and portraying them in a (largely) positive light. While many of the gay playwrights up to that point (Williams, Albee, Inge for example) had been criticized by some in the gay community for not writing explicitly about gay characters, that’s not a complaint that can be leveled against Terrence McNally, author of Some Men. The very successful McNally, who has penned “straight” plays like Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and Master Class and the books of mainstream musicals like Ragtime and The Full Monty has authored more than his share of important gay-themed plays and musicals (Love! Valor! Compassion!, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Corpus Christi, Mothers and Sons). But while Some Men is by McNally and is a gay-themed play, it’s not a particularly important or insightful one.
The 1922 scene is in effect a prologue to the main action even though it’s the fifth scene to be played. A rich young man in the Hamptons is carrying on a clandestine affair with his Irish chauffeur. In 1968, gay men are still having to find sex on the sly, with the young married Bernie (Edward Fraim) experiencing his first gay sex, with the help of a hustler. Three years later, Bernie comes out and leaves his wife and children. The play mostly follows Bernie’s trajectory as a gay man, though not in a linear way. When the action returns full circle to the present day wedding, we haven’t really learned a lot about these characters or gained much of a message beyond what The Boys in the Band movie said in its first 60 seconds back in 1970 – “times have changed.”
Still, McNally’s travelogue through gay history may be an enjoyable nostalgia trip for those who lived through it and a good history lesson for those who didn’t. The cast of ten has fun with it. Fraim is a sincere and likeable Bernie, and David Besky is the strong-willed cross-dresser who does NOT riot at Stonewall. Tom Chiola and Patrick Rybarczyk are amusing as the older couple, Aaron and Scoop. Jeremy Sonkin shows range as a lonely fortyish chat room participant, a fabulous drag singer of 1932, and with Sam Button-Harrison as his partner, one of the obnoxious gay parents. Sonkin and Button-Harrison are also terrific as clueless college students who in a particularly funny scene interview Aaron and Scoop for their gender studies class. In that scene, Aaron and Scoop try to explain to them how things weren’t all bad in the old days – a point of view not often heard in gay literature or political writings. The scene is so good you wonder if it, rather than the wedding, would have been a better framing device. It’s frustrating to see McNally’s fairly perfunctory and obligatory treatments of AIDS, the pre-WWI gay underground and today’s gay weddings when his fresher scenes concerning Stonewall and these college students show where the play could have gone. And though McNally covers a period from 1922 to the present, it’s clear he understands the gay scene of 1968 to 1989 the best, and describes it in a very New York-centric way. Things may not have been so rosy for Aaron and Scoop had they lived in a smaller city somewhere.
When McNally wrote this play in 2006 or so (it was first produced that year), he may just have felt it was time to do another gay play, with or without much inspiration for one. He was apparently back in form earlier this year with Mothers and Sons, a drama about the mother of a man who died of AIDS 20 years earlier who attempts to reconcile with the now gay-married former partner of her son.
Times have changed for the LGBTQ community – and are continuing to change at a pace almost beyond belief. There will be lots of stories for writers to tell and they won’t all be about the AIDS crisis or coming out. In the meantime, Some Men is an entertaining, if slight, look at how we get where we are today.
Rating: ★★★
Some Men continues through September 14th at Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 6pm. Tickets are $20-$30, and are available by phone (773-250-3112) or online through BrownPaperTickets.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at PrideFilmsAndPlays.com. (Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by Alexa Ray Meyers
artists
cast
Robert Ayres (Eugene, AOL Supervisor, Mary, Mr. Keys, Piano Player), David Besky (Marty, The Snake, Archie, Mendy, Nurse Jack), Ben Burke (Perry, Zach, David, Downtown 11, Darren, Gary, Gordon), Sam Button-Harrison (Paul, Boy Toy, Bus Boy, BJ, Brad, Spencer, Pat, Mel), Tom Chiola (Aaron, Tommy’s Dad), Buffed in Chelsea, Alex, Joseph), Edward Fraim (Bernie), Jude Hanson (Michael, Funeral Director, Martin, Lester, Richard, Dick), Nelson Rodriguez (Carl, Padraic, Xerxes, Troy, Seb, Lewis), Patrick Rybarczyk (Fritz, Will, Joel, Scoop, Kurt), Jeremy Sonkin (Marcus, Tommy, Camus, Cliff, Angel Eyes, Jackson, Fritz)
behind the scenes
David Zak, Derek Van Barham (co-directors), Tianyu Qiu (scenic design), Raquel Adorno (costume design), Ellie Humphrys (lighting design), Robert Ayres, Kallie Rolison, Derek Van Barham (sound design), Robert Ayres (original music), Ryan Pollock (production stage manager), Alex Pinkett, Kyle Shoemaker (production interns), Alexa Ray Meyers (photos)
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