NOVEMBER 12, 1993

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

ENTERTAINMENT.

Queer night out at the Play House

Grace in America Cleveland Play House

Reviewed by Barry Daniels

Imagine an aging, somewhat decrepit, queer in a natty thriftshop sport jacket, appropriately accessorized, standing alone in the cold dark night at a bus stop on Euclid Avenue. He is facing the Cleveland Play House, and there is a brightly lit Burger King behind him. If you look closely at his face, you'll catch the gleam of dementia flickering darkly in his eyes. It is a Tuesday night after a Play House opening, and it is your tireless theater critic, dear reader, his mind tortured by the question of how he is going to write about what he has just seen. In jest? Ingest?

Josephine Abady's production of the American premiere of Grace in America at the Cleveland Play House literally eats up (ingests) Irish playwright Antoine O Flatharta's rather slight and dramaturgically shallow, but potentially poetic, reflection on the dual nature of the immigrant experience in America. Designer David Potts' backdrop, a Red Grooms style map of the USA, sets the tone: we're in for a bright-colored pop cartoon. What it doesn't prepare us for is the crudity of the staging which succeeds in reducing almost all the elements of the production to broadest possible outline.

The characters and situation are schematic: Finbar and Sean, two young Irishmen (buddies) have come to America seeking their fortunes. They have grown up in a world saturated with images of America pop culture and consumer goods. They set out on a journey across the country with a planned visit to Graceland, to pay their respects to the King. On the way they stop at Sean's Aunt Maggie's home in Buffalo. Maggie and her husband Con emigrated to the United States forty years earlier and represent a different generation. Con is a hard working, conserva-

tive, rigid and unfeeling union boss who believes he has achieved "the good life." Finbar, cynical, and exuberantly embracing American consumerism and pop culture, is the current generation's Con. Maggie, although she believes like Con that they have achieved some part of the American Dream, expresses the pain of the loss of family and homeland that the immigrant faces. Sean, fike Maggie, has ambivalent feelings about his decision to stay in the United States. Elvis, of course, represents youthful rebellion and the quest for freedom as well as the failure of the American Dream when we are reminded that he ended his life as a bloated, drugged, paranoid object of consumption, pathetically crooning "Danny Boy,"

Sadly O Flatharta, and/or his producers, seem more influenced by TV than anything else (forgive me this tired cliché about Play House productions). The older couple are presented as offensive stereotypes of a certain kind of blue-collar couple. And more often than not the play opts for cheap jokes and easy laughs at the expense of any more thoughtful exploration of the situation or characters. Both Aideen O'Kelly (Maggie) and Jack Wallace (Con) seem to understand the possibilities of giving some inner life to their sketchy roles, but they are constantly undermined by the staging. Of the younger men, Edward Tully, as Sean, has the one three-dimensional role in the play. When left to his own devices, he gives a sensitive rendering of the character. But he, too, is finally defeated by the obvious machina-

tions of the action in the second act and the

playwright's heavy-handed use of symbols.

Mercifully, Dylan Chafly's performance as Finbar allowed this queer critic entry into, or escape from the production. In the first scene he strips to a revealing pair of grey Calvin's-I'm not exactly sure of the brand, but I hope you follow the point-and manag-

es to engagingly jiggle his jewels as he exits to take a shower. Unfortunately his very considerable talents are somewhat constricted by the pants which he soon puts on, and, alas keeps on for the rest of the evening. I never quite figured out if I was seeing a gay actor failing to portray a straight man or a straight actor succeeding at playing a gay stereotype. When I looked at the program again at intermission I saw that Mr. Chafly's most recent New York credit was a play called Cute Boys.... Of course, any knowledgeable gay critic or audience member knows this is the first of the Vortex Theatre's Cute Boys in their Underpants... trilogy. So the gratuitous, albeit welcome, striptease is an in joke. But does this mean I'm to read Finbar and Sean as a couple like their counterparts Con and Maggie? What I think was a costume problem at the beginning of the second act helped me answer this question. For the first twenty minutes of the act, which starts with the two young men having breakfast, the zipper of Sean's pants was open. The actor seemed aware of it, but, in spite of several brief exits from the stage, he was not able to get the pants zipped until he had a few minutes off stage. I laughed trying to fill the dead spaces of the action with the possible significances of this detail in my queer fantasy version of the play. Has Sean been playing with the cute boy in his underpants? Or is this the kind of onstage actor competition that we find so often in theater history anecdotes: he showed you his; I want to show

RICHARD TERMINE

Dylan Chalfy (Finbar) of Grace In America shown here keeping his talent hidden.

you mine! Or, oh my dear, what do the Irish eat for breakfast?

You may read the digressions and fantasies of the above paragraph as the bizarre ravings of a gay critic who read too much Charles Ludlam last week while preparing a feature story for this paper or as the desperate attempts of a despairing fag who loves and teaches (professes) theater to salvage something from another two hours wasted at the Play House. As I fled the theater, frantically, thinking about how I was going to deal with this production, a French phrase came to mind: C'est de la merde fumante. Here was my key to the production style that has become the norm at this theater. Politely translated, this style can be properly dubbed excremental!

CHEVREI TIKUA

The reband & Sti-d

the Bestab a u bay

Weekend

10th Anniversary November 19-21, 1993

L'DOR VA DOR

From Generation To Generation

Call CTLine 932-5551 for more info

IN THE

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Saturday, Nov. 20, 9pm 3130 Mayfield Road Cleveland Heights $7 at the door

SHABBAT SERVICES at Fairmount Temple 23737 Fairmount Blvd. Beachwood

8pm, Friday, Nov. 19 Visiting Scholar

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