Thoughts on "Some Men"

[Calvin]

Posted: 3/21/07 at 11:52pm

Oh, how times have changed. It seems like only yesterday Terrence McNally was sparking fiery protests with his gay Jesus allegory "Corpus Christi." Now he's getting titters out of the blue-hair crowd at Second Stage Theatre with jokes about bathhouses, online booty calls and even...gasp...gay marriage with his latest work, "Some Men," now in previews for a March 26 opening.

It's the M-word that's at the center of the show, a series of vignettes throughout gay history bookended an unseen couple's nuptials. The scenes--spanning from an underground Harlem nightclub to the inevitable future of legalized gay marriage--all tie to the various wedding attendees, a veritable who's who of gay archetypes portrayed by a deft ensemble.

McNally's writing is as good as ever in many spots, particularly in the large ensemble scenes. The trite subject matter of a gay Internet chat room is freshly humorous, the nightclub owner's onstage antics in talking of the coded messages sent by gay songwriters to their lovers is an exquisite monologue and the furor created by a drag queen's appearance in a piano bar neighboring the Stonewall riots would make a striking 10-minute play by itself.

Unfortunately, a few scenes don't work at all, like the beach rendezvous of a Jewish Wall Street broker and his Irish chauffeur, and others, like a modern group therapy session, drag on far too long. The second act as a whole could use a good trim, as the play clocks in at about two and a half hours including intermission. And it seems pointless as characters suddenly reveal family relationships with all the characters from the older scenes. After all: One of the seasoned gay characters responded incredulously when a young upstart referred to gays as a "people." So why the need to make further ties between the scenes other than merely the diverse gay experience?

Standouts in the strong ensemble include Don Amendolia in a variety of "older man" roles, Kelly AuCoin as the recurring character of Bernie who makes the decision to come out when it wasn't en vogue and the honey-voiced David Greenspan as the foul-mouthed drag queen.

It's telling that my three choices are all the "older" ensemble members. Perhaps it's generational, but the older characters ring much truer than the younger and run together much less. Poor Pedro Pascal has so many similar roles that I couldn't even remember where his wedding guest fit in the story fabric by the end of the show. But he looks good in a towel, so all is forgiven.

Despite the cliche scenarios and stereotypical characters, however, this Cliff's Notes of gay history seems necessary. Perhaps it's that familiarity that makes it palatable with some of the same people who might cringe over a gay Christ-like character. With the crescendo of verbal crassness and physical violence toward gays that's been around in recent months, it's delightfully sobering to watch these disparate histories converge into the conclusion of equality, for better or for worse.

[Tirso de Molina]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:50am

I caught the 3/21 matinee of this show, and I have to admit I was disappointed in the quality of the script, despite the best efforts of a group of talented actors. The play itself, once you get past the framing device of the wedding that begins and ends it, is shapeless; there's no apparent reason for why the various flashback scenes occur in the order they do. Though the actors do their best to differentiate between the many characters each plays, sometimes it's hard to figure out whether a particular actor is playing the role he played two scenes ago or a new character we haven't seen before, particularly when McNally resorts to two-dimensional stereotypes to communicate the essence of minor characters to the audience. (McNally also apparently exercises the playwright's prerogative of writing stage directions like "X takes off his shirt, revealing a ripped buff physique" a little more often than is necessary for his dramatic ends.)

The play is also as derivative as a long day's journey into night is long: McNally is attempting to give a review of gay history in America, but he ends up including too many scenes recalling earlier successful gay plays, some of them his own better ones -- the longtime couple were dead ringers for one of the couples in LOVE VALOUR COMPASSION, the scene in St. Vincent's waiting room during the AIDS epidemic recalled both THE NORMAL HEART and AS IS, etc. It's also very emotionally uneven, with McNally veering between scenes of real psychological insight and scenes that are sentimental to the point of maudlin, and as Calvin observed, it badly needs editing. In addition to the ones he cited, I thought the ending scene of Act I went on interminably before reaching a conclusion that was so clearly telegraphed in advance that it packed little emotional punch.

For my money, the play's single best scene was the Harlem nightclub owner's performance of "Ten Cents a Dance", punctuated by reminiscenes of its unhappily gay lyricist: the never-named Lorenz Hart, whose sad biography McNally has clearly read and mines for genuine pathos.

Make no mistake: this play is sincere and heartfelt, and McNally is too good a playwright not to include some effective scenes and some very funny lines, but it's nowhere near his best work, nor does it compare well to the more substantial American gay plays in whose footsteps he's following. I really, really hope that DEUCE is better than this, if only for the sake of Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes.

Updated On: 3/22/07 at 11:50 AM

[Calvin]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:57am

I agree on the "Ten Cents a Dance" scene, and Michael McElroy is wonderful in it. I wish he had more to do in the rest of the show.