MARCH 10, 1995 GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE

EVENINGS OUT

Guilt and self-hatred exposed in funny, troubling play

Raised in Captivity by Nicky Silver

Vineyard Theatre, New York City

Reviewed by Barry Daniels

Towards the end of Nicky Silver's new play, the gay protagonist Sebastien remembers his dead lover, Simon, and laments, "I miss him. I miss everyone." This struck me as a key for understanding this funny and disturbing play. Silver's angry and biting wit is a response to the terrible sense of loss that AIDS has brought to the gay community and the helpless sense of guilt survivors can feel. The play is an elaborate metaphor which unmasks guilt and self-hatred and tries to find a way to let them go.

trying to somehow take on all the pain her patients have experienced. After mutilating herself, she wanders through the action like a figure out of Greek tragedy, blind and wearing bloodstained purple rags. Sinclair, who has been corresponding with Sebastien, has committed a real crime. His guilt, which is revealed in a spellbinding monologue, lies in the reality that what he has done can never be undone.

As the play ends, Silver provides us with images of resolution. Sinclair, in an act of compassion, frees Sebastien by "killing” their relationship, which had become Sebastien's obsession. Bernadette ends her loveless marriage. Both characters seem to have a restored sense of self-worth. Together they will embrace living. Life is renewed in the form of Bernadette's child, whom they will raise to-

Anthony Rapp and Peter Frechette in Raised in Captivity.

The central characters in Raised in Captivity are twins, Sebastien and Bernadette, who are reunited at their mother's funeral. They are both neurotic products of a dysfunctional family and are now leading dysfunctional lives. Bernadette is a compulsive talker and anorexic married to a dentist, Kip. (She married him because he said she was thin.) Kip is a dopey optimist who hates his job because "he finds no poetry in teeth." Freed from financial necessity by his mother-in-law's death, he gives up his job to become an artist. In Silver's world, heterosexual marriage is a prison, and Bernadette is a quintessential “mad housewife."

Sebastien is a writer whose lover, Simon, died of AIDS. Sebastien has reached the end of his rope: he has stopped writing, gone deeply into debt, and has become totally alienated and alone. He's been celibate since his lover's death eleven years ago. When Silver introduces sex into Sebastien's life in the figure of young hustler, it proves to be nearly fatal.

Guilt is represented by the two most important people in Sebastien's world, his therapist, Hilary MacMahon, and a convicted murderer, Dylan Taylor Sinclair. MacMahon feels a kind of metaphysical guilt, as though she were

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gether and who will be named Simon.

That Silver can make all of this funny is one of his particular talents. Fat Men in Skirts was a comedy about incest, cannibalism and madness. Pterodactyls was a com-

edy about AIDS, death and the end of the world. Although his plays deal with some of our profoundest fears, his vision is an absurdist one.

Raised in Captivity sparkles with Silver's brittle and biting wit.

In many ways, I think Raised in Captivity is less accessible to straight audiences than Pterodactyls. It seems more fundamentally queer in its vision than that play was. Sebastien's alienation is the common experience of most gay people in an essentially straight society. I sensed that the gay people in the audience laughed a lot harder than the straight people.

Although I laughed throughout the performance I saw, I'm sorry to report that the production was not as good as the writing. Although the cast, headed by Peter Frenchette as Sebastien and Patricia Clarkson as Bernadette, was excellent, the disparate elements of the play never cohered. It was as though director David Warren had refused to acknowledge the play's queerness and believe in its meanings. It was an odd experience for me to be so captivated by a play while being disappointed in its performance.

Raised in Captivity is being performed at the Vineyard Theatre near Union Square in New York, Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 3 pm and 7:30 pm. Tickets are $25 and can be reserved by calling the box office at 212-353-3874.

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