10% GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE November 24, 2000
This Fur Could Be Yours eveningsout
If You Come To The New and Used
FUR SALE
Thanksgiving Weekend November 24-26 10am-5pm Friday & Saturday 11am-5pm Sunday
Cleveland Sight Center
on
1909 E. 101st at Chester Ave.
Is Your Home
or Office Making You Sick?
90% of Colds Are Caught Indoors
ALLERGIES?
ASTHMA?
SINUS PROBLEMS?
DUST MITES?
PET DANDER? SMOKE?
MOLD? MILDEW?
•
Revolutionary air purification system.
• Not a filtering system.
• Purifies the air much like nature does during a thunderstorm. I
• It's portable!
• Just plug it in & see what happens to odors and stale air.
• Just pennies a day to operate.
Receive a FREE, Three-day trial of this amazing purifier with this coupon.
Call Joseph Stastny Licensed Nurse
330-468-6314
Makes a Great Gift!
BODY LANGUAGE
“THE” GAY & LESBIAN BOOK-SHOP MORE THAN 500 TITLES
NEW STORES OPEN, OLD ONES MOVE, SOME HAVE "BISTROS" AND COFFEE SHOPS;
WE JUST OFFER THE BEST SELECTION
10% OFF EVERY DAY
EROTIC NOVELS, FICTION, HOW "TO", HOW "NOT" TO, COFFEE TABLE BOOKS, NON-FICTION, S&M, FETISH & MORE. (IF ITS IN PRINT, WE WILL FIND IT FOR YOU.)
SHOP ONLINE: www.body-language.com 11424 LORAIN AVE. @W.115TH ST., CLEVELAND 216-251-3330 or toll free 888-GAY-7733 11AM TO 10PM DAILY, TO 6PM SUNDAY
DON'T FORGET MJ'S DOWN THE STREET FOR A DRINK
A-marvelously gay musical fantasia, old jokes and all
When Pigs Fly
by Howard Crabtree Beck Center
Reviewed by Anthony Glassman
Once upon a time, there was a boy in a high school whose only ambition in life was to put on extravagant shows and play the role of Dream Curly in Oklahoma! His guidance counselor, Mrs. Roundhole, suggested instead that he look into plumbing, garden supplies, watch repair, or, perhaps, chicken farming.
If Howard Crabtree had taken her advice, we wouldn't have When Pigs Fly, currently playing at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.
Overall, it's a good thing that he didn't listen to her. It's a funny show, and the cast and crew on the Beck production are pretty darn good at what they do.
Dean Holtz, who plays
Crabtree in this autobiographical fantasia of musical numbers, is absolutely adorable, and exemplifies the Dream Curly in every gay boy. His charm lies in his ability to believably portray complete innocence and total faith in his ability to pull this show together with the help of his friends. Daniel Gibson is simply a little hunk. His turn playing a centaur in the number "Not All Man" is riveting. A few too many puns, but they abound throughout the play.
The show itself is very funny. It's a shame that Crabtree himself never got to see opening night; he died days before the first production opened in 1996.
It covers its bases, in terms of musicals. There's a bit of every type of song in there, it seems. And if, as Mel Brooks once said, without Jews, gays, and Gypsies there would be no theater, this must be what theater would be like without the Jews and Gypsies.
There are, however, a few small prob-
BECK CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Nickolas L. Vannello, left, and Dean Holtz.
Tom Castro is magnificent. His torch songs to Rush Limbaugh, Strom Thurmond, and Newt Gingrich are hysterical; in an earlier generation, his performance would have been deemed “a hoot."
Nickolas Vannello gets the role of the token bitchy queen, a role he plays for all it's worth. It's a little strange, since he's well known in the Cleveland leather and bear scene. He quipped after the show that, now that his butch façade has been shattered, he'll have to change his name.
The nicest surprise in the show is John Wasiniak, a local boy who moved to New York and appeared in When Pigs Fly offBroadway for 14 months.
"My mother gets the credit for me being here," he said. "She saw a season preview . . . and told me I should call them and try to get in the show. She gets the 10 percent agent's fee for this role."
Perhaps the biggest kudos, however, go to the show's 12 costume designers, coordinated by Jenniver Sparano. The costumes are a cross between a garage sale at Ethel Merman's house, Halloween, and a Tom of Finland picture gone awry. They are magnificent, funny and appropriate at the same time. Some truly talented people designed these costumes and put them together, and my hat goes off to them.
lems with the play. The first is that a good number of pieces that were written in the mid 1990s now seem dated. Not all the way through, mind you, but there are some references to things that are no longer relevant.
An example is "Hawaiian Wedding Day." It is very amusing, but the fact that Hawaii changed its constitution to end the possibility of gay marriage doesn't help the number now. The references to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are a little dusty.
Pigs also can't quite decide whether it's playing to gay or straight audiences. There are a lot of in-jokes, but a couple of times during the show, most notably during the first act's finale, it would be preaching to the choir if it were intended for gay audiences.
These quibbles aside, it really is a marvelous little show. If this is the quality of the gay material being presented at Beck this season, I can't wait for spring's The Dying Gaul.
When Pigs Fly plays Fridays through Sundays until December 17, 8 pm Friday and Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, with additional midnight showings on December 8 and 15. and a special 7:30 show on December 17. The show is at the Beck Center for the Arts. 17801 Detroit Ave. Lakewood. They can be reached at 216-521-2540 or http:// www.beckcenter.org.