JUNE 9, 1995

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

EVENINGS OUT

Flawless performance The

saves self-indulgent play

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me Reality Theatre Through June 24

Reviewed by Michael A. Miller

If sincerity has a place in our society, David Drake is to be commended. I'm convinced the playwright intended The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me as a tour de force by which we could re-assess and re-digest, in manageable pieces, the community we've created. He asks us to filter our universe through love, lust, frustration, mourning, and hope.

Unfortunately, the mirror Drake holds up to us is shallow and passive, as his vehicle neither challenges nor resolves. While watching this work was like participating in a collective out-of-body experience, I felt neither refreshed nor enlightened upon returning to live in my skin.

Apparently, Drake became enthralled with being born on the same day as the Stonewall riots, but six years earlier. Then, meeting Larry Kramer, playwright of The Normal Heart (the first professional production to address AIDS), at a Pride march must have thrust Drake over the edge, because Night allegedly contains an autobiographical element. Hence, the "kiss" in the title-not a physical kiss, but a kiss of discovery.

When a play is made available for performances, unless it is billed as a "work in progress," one could reasonably expect it to be in highly polished form. If the script I heard was the finished product, I'm afraid to ponder what Drake edited out. Based on Night, I don't think Drake is an untalented writer. I do think, however, that he was asleep at the controls when he penned this mess.

Night has always been presented as a oneperson piece, to the knowledge of Equity actor Frank A. Barnhart, who is performing the work in cooperation with his Act Out productions. In general, the one-person show is the ultimate instrument for the performer who is ready to showcase his or her virtuosity.

If Barnhart had selected a piece more challenging than Night, I would be tempted to brand him a masochist. He selected a work that does not have nearly enough levels and is too self-indulgent to be performed by one person. Drake should have added more characters, or at least one female character for his EveryGay-Man to play off of. The different personae Barnhart is required to assume are not sufficiently distinct to convey all of Drake's statement. Had Drake attempted the same objective with a larger cast of characters, and were they all still as flaccid as those he created here, at least the disaster would have been less concentrated.

In the opening segment, Drake's EveryGay-Man character delineates his awakening by drawing parallels between points of development and popular musicals. Drake constructed a clever technique here, and demonstrated a love of the language. However, the passage is too melodic, too poetic, and too narrative to be rendered as a dramatic monologue. After the first few measures of this windy lyric, I wondered where it was going. (Nowhere.) Just as I subliminally dreaded, this was setting the tone for the rest of the program. Feh.

The platitude-and-melodrama parade includes a small boy who, in Drake's washedout attempt at foreshadowing, is casually and innocently exposed to the non-sexual but stereotypical lifestyle necessities of the gay man: shopping with Mommy at the mall and buying Daddy a fey butterfly-in-acrylic paperweight; turning on to the Village People via a visit to a unisex hair salon, acquiring the album and having the homophobic teenage brother of the best girl-Barbie buddy opine the Village People are a lot of "fairies"; defending the Village People and looking up to them as role models because they're butch. This scene is an energetic narrative, devoid of dramatic action, but Drake might have redeemed it by using the imagery he infused as a set-up for ironies to

clinch some relevant viewpoints.

Drake addressed the cruising and relationship scenarios and touched upon the perceived Heteroid Polarization Wars in "Why I Go to the Gym" and "12-inch Single." The latter is more clever and entertaining, as Every-GayMan descends from club diva-studw arrior to psycho-rejection victim—and all to a jaunty disco-rap!

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me is not structered according to the conflict-climaxresolution formula, and Barnhart performs it without intermission. So, it just kind of winds down. The second to last scene, "A Thousand Points of Light" is the obligatory tribute to people with AIDS. I would never minimize the challenges and triumphs of PWAs, nor deny them any admiration or acknowledgement expressed to them. However, societal duty and gratuitous emotionalism are no substitutes for competent theatre. If Drake feels the need to indulge in candlelight memorials and evrystar-in-the-heavens-is-a-fallen-comrade sentiment, he might do better to enter the political arena where he may accomplish something more practical than tear-jerking.

"A Thousand Points of Light" segues smoothly into "And The Way We Were," where Every-Gay-Man is half of a couple celebrating New Year's Eve on the last day of the 20th century. By this point in history, of course, according to Drake's fantasy-prophecy, same-gender union has been sanctioned by the state and a cure for AIDS has been claimed after remaining underground in the clutches of the government for a year. The show ended as desperately as it began, with Drake attempting to weave the last fiber of our attention into a banner that exhorted us to go forth and be gay, and have a chirpy tomorrow.

Barnhart is his own savior, though, as he is sufficiently fine-tuned in his craft to rise above the material. I don't know when, if ever, I've seen such a seamless, flawless performance from one actor-on opening night, no less. He never missed a beat!

Barnhart has spent the last 11 years with Reality Theatre, but has also worked in Tennessee, central Ohio, the New Venture Theatre, and Ohio State University. When The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me became available for reading about 11⁄2 years ago, Barnhart

sought the rights to produce it, even going as far as talking to Drake and his agent. Upon hearing about the play (which opened offBroadway, has played in Los Angeles and nearly every other major city, and even England), Barnhart felt the show spoke to him "like it speaks to most gay people in some shape or form.”

Addressing the issue of his personal objectives as a gay man and an actor in mounting this production, Barnhart "loves being an actor" and "can't imagine. . . doing anything else. I also love being a gay man and being in a gay community. This production—and there are other ones, too allows me to combine these two things that I care very deeply about and actually say something, to speak, to give a message... To me, that's the best of both worlds."

Barnhart's efforts at making personal statements, as a gay man, through theatre "has become a big focus of mine. There was a time when, as an actor, my primary goal was to get cast in a play. Now, it's not only to get cast in a play. It has to say something I want to say and this is something that I feel strongly about."

Barnhart has reached a crest in his career where he hopes he can be selective about what roles he accepts, gay characters or not. "A lot of what I've been doing the last few years have been gay-themed plays. I've done a lot of, or directed, gay-themed plays. A lot of actors, whether gay or straight, would say 'I did a gay play, but now I want to do something else.' In my mind, gay characters and gay plays are just as diverse and different as any other type of theatre. Therefore, I feel I could play gay characters for the rest of my life and still have something different to say each time." ♡

Reality Theatre is located at 736 N. Pearl St.

in Columbus' Short North Arts District. Call 614-294-7541 for ticket information.

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June 22nd

Singing Her Hits "Everyboody's Free" Are You Ready to Fly

232 North Third St.

Columbus, Ohio (614) 228-2804