I saw a production of the play somewhat recently, and I didn't feel it held up particularly well -- especially without a performance as dynamic as White's at its center. Without acting like homophobia still doesn't exist within the industry, the world the play represents felt like a relic of a bygone era. (It's worth remembering that Neil Patrick Harris was outed around the time this play was on Broadway, and there were sincere conversations about whether he'd still be believable as a straight leading man.) It would need a lot of revising and tightening to seem as relevant today as it did 20 years ago.
Casting Porter is an atrocious idea. Putting aside everything about his stage persona that's off-putting, the gendered dynamic between Diane and Mitchell is such a key to the play that wouldn't be replicated by presenting the characters as two gay men.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 2/28/26 at 08:35 AM
