AUGUST 2, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 23
EVENINGS OUT
Terrence McNally's gay 'Big Chill' comes to CATCO
by Daniel R. Mullen
Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play Love! Valour! Compassion!, about a family of eight gay men, will be produced by the Contemporary American Theatre Com-
The cast of Love! Valour! Compassion!; Top row, left to right: Jason Podplesky, Kevin J. Hayes, Joshua Alan Wank, Aaron Carter. Bottom row, left to right: Joey Landwehr, Clark Tayor, Steven Black.
pany of Columbus for one month starting August 7.
The play "goes from incredibly hysterical comedy into a deeply dramatic moment, sort of like life," said Steven Black, who plays Gregory, the main character.
Gregory, the forty-something owner of a dance company, gathers his family of seven friends at a summer house in New York over three holidays-Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day.
"In many ways it's a family values play," said Black, who spent four years with Broadway Equity Fights AIDS. Black also acted for CATCO in Christopher Durang's Durang
Durang.
Love! Valour! Compassion!, which will soon be made into a motion picture, has been called a "gay Big Chill." The characters are "a group of people who have chosen each other for love and support. And, as all families are, they're a little dysfunctional," said
director Steven Anderson, the artistic director of Phoenix Theatre Circle.
Part of the performance involves the characters addressing the audience directly with knowledge of the future. They know their fates, said Black.
The audience will know the characters or is it the actors?-on a more personal level, as each of them, at some point in the play, perform in the nude.
Speaking less of the light costume requirements than the play's heavy gay content, Anderson said, “Although we've come a long way since Boys in the Band, we're still in a position of it being risky for a producer to put money into this type of play." On Broadway, at least, McNally is in "an enviable position because they will literally produce what he writes," said Anderson.
McNally has come a long way since he wrote The Ritz twenty years ago, Anderson added. In that play the gay characters were one-dimensional and written for the purpose of comic relief. The story, later made into a movie, involves a straight character who hides from a hit man in a gay bathhouse.
In Love! Valour! Compassion!, "McNally is not afraid to make his characters masculine," said Black.
CATCO's marketing associate, Amanda Brockett, said the theatre company "has always done controversial plays." She said one of the first AIDS plays, Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, was produced by CATCO in 1986. The risk is minimal, she said, given the large gay and lesbian population in Columbus.
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The cast is representative of that population, but not as much as one might think. “At least three" of the seven cast members are gay, according to Anderson and Black, who both gladly declare a queer identity. They don't want to make who's gay and who's straight an issue for the audience.
Still, "Look, honey, the straight boy wants it," would be sweet revenge on all those
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bigots who saw Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk and screamed, "What's that fag going to do with the girl?"
Besides Black, the cast includes Kevin J. Hayes, Jason Podplesky and Joshua Alan Wank (who play twin brothers), Joey Landwehr, Clark Taylor, and Aaron Carter. "We've been fortunate enough to gather an ensemble of actors who've really learned to love one another, which you can see on stage during the production,” said Anderson. “They're a group of people who've developed a relationship like the people in the play have.
Anderson said some of the funnier and more memorable anecdotes from rehearsal are far too personal to share, but he did tell
what being in a gay play does to straight actors. One of them was hurt that Anderson was affectionate with the gay actors but not with him. "I didn't think you wanted to be touched," Anderson told him. "Well, I do," the actor responded. “Can't you treat me like you treat everybody else?"
"I patted him on the shoulder and said, 'Okay, I understand,' and he said, 'On the butt. You touch them on the butt!' '
""
Love! Valour! Compassion! will play from August 7 through September 7 in Studio One at the Riffe Center, 77 South High St., Columbus. Tickets range from $6 to $16; call the box office at 614-461-0010.
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