0 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE March 30, 2001

eveningsout

Spring shows are a good way to avoid the rain and snow

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland-The birds are singing, the days are getting longer and warmer, and road construction has started anew across the state. It must be spring.

While a lovely time of year, spring, like its sibling autumn, has a major drawback: lots of rain. However, that can be avoided by staying indoors, seeing the scads of new shows opening around Cleveland.

'The Dying Gaul'

Written by Craig Lucas and directed by Cleveland theater übermensch Roger Truesdell, the play deals with business, betrayal and love online.

How much of ourselves do we give while chatting on the Internet? How much are we

Lenny Pinna

willing to give for success, and how much can someone else take from us without our volition?

These are some of the questions raised in this cyber-thriller. The narrative centers around Robert (Curt Arnold), a gay screenwriter trying to sell the story of his lover's death. The buyer is Jeffrey (Kevin Joseph Kelly), a bisexual Hollywood producer. Jeffrey tries to buy more than the script, though; he also tries to gain Robert's affections in the bargain.

However, Jeffrey plans to change the gender of the dying lover, destroying the context of the work.

Elaine (Ali Hernan), Jeffrey's wife, also gets into the picture, if you will. Her schemes and machinations are another factor in the motion of the play.

Making the production all the more interesting is the construction of it: The director and the two male actors are gay, and Hernan is bisexual, adding a dynamic that would otherwise be missing were they heterosexual, or not out. Two straight male actors can kiss, but no matter how well they act, it is not their mouth of choice.

This is perhaps the anchor of the spring theater season, the one to watch. Truesdell's work has been lauded left and right; directorially, he is one of northeast Ohio's ' golden boys.

The Dying Gaul will play March 30 to April 22 at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, 216-521-2540. It is recommended for mature audiences, containing very graphic language. and adult themes.

'Swing!' and 'Rent'

Playhouse Square is slamming the city with a double threat this spring.

Swing! is a musical review, like Stomp and the old follies, with singing and dancing aplenty to fill an evening.

The show covers all aspects of the swing scene, from hip-hop to country swing, and the songs cover the decades from today back to the Harlem Renaissance.

Especially fun is everyone's favorite game, spot the gay dancer. His name is Jeb Bounds, and this enthusiastic Texan has worked in Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, toured with a production of Showboat, and now comes to Cleveland for a two-week engagement in the tour of Swing!

Playhouse Square is also bringing back Rent, the perennial off-Broadway favorite that has more awards than actors.

Produced by the prominent and gay Jeffrey Seller, the play centers around three couples, one straight, one lesbian, and one gay, although one of the gay men is also a transvestite.

The trials and tribulations of the sextet fill an evening of theater like nothing else. Swing! will play April 24 to May 6, while Rent runs May 15 to 20.

'Spring Storm'

Lenny Pinna, whose film Letters to Uranus was a major local contribution to the Cleveland International Film Festival this year, is directing Spring Storm. It is an early work by Tennessee Williams, the playwright who gave us Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer.

An Ohio premier of a "lost work" by Williams, who wrote the play while a student at the University of Iowa in 1937, the piece stars recent New York transplant Meg Kelly as Heavenly, the center of the action. She is a Southern girl, an embryonic Blanche DuBois, laying claim to her own sexuality in an age when women were trophies at best, chattels at worst.

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Curt Arnold and Kevin Kelly (wearing white pants) in The Dying Gaul.

Surrounding her is her family, enmeshed in their own struggles, drowning in the social anxieties and lusts that mark so much of Williams' work.

The play was discovered in 1998. It has received one short production and a staged reading since, making it a rare gem in the area theater scene's crown.

Spring Storm will play at the Corning Theater of the Fine Arts Society in Willoughby. The box office can be reached at 440-951-6637.

'Closer'

Speaking of gay directors, since we've already touched on the esteemed Roger Truesdell and Lenny Pinna, Dobama The-

Dan Kilbane, intricately involved with the first two Soap Scums, is not co-directing this year. However, given the quality of talent that Dobama has at its disposal, his absence, while deeply felt, will not detract from the humor and wit of the performances.

Dobama's Night Kitchen is also adding a new improv comedy based on a longrunning television show. Law & Order: Special Improv Unit is definite must-see theater. Cop shows haven't been this fun since Barney Miller left the air.

Both shows are running now until April 1, but will return for an encore run May 4 through 19. Soap Scum runs Fridays and Sundays, Law and Order on Saturday nights.

atre is presenting Closer, directed by Scott 'Fugitive Pieces'

Plate.

Plate, of course, was Oscar Wilde in Cleveland Public Theatre's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde last fall, as well as starring in the recent Halle Theater production of Visiting Mr. Green. Both star turns furthering his reputation both as the hardest-working man on the Cleveland stage and as an incomparable actor.

Now he steps behind the scenes to direct this British play about love and betrayal, with occasional use of the Internet. No, he's not directing another version of The Dying Gaul.

Closer deals with two couples whose relationships are not all that they could be, and the various ways that the people in the relationships can stab each other in the back. Of course, no one can tell whether you're really a boy or a girl online.

Closer is recommended for mature audiences, dealing graphically with adult themes. The play runs April 27 to May 19, and the box office number is 216-932-3396.

Three at Night Kitchen

Dobama's Night Kitchen, on the other hand, is dealing with the themes of love and betrayal in a lighter way, with the return of a familiar friend.

Soap Scum: The Next Generation is the third installment of the improvisational soap opera satire presented in the Night Kitchen. This year, mirroring real-life soap opera story lines, one of the women reveals that she is (gasp!) a lesbian.

No theater wrap-up is complete without a little something from Cleveland Public Theatre, the anchor of the Detroit Shoreway revitalization. Last fall they brought us Gross Indecency with Scott Plate; now they present Caridad Svich's Fugitive Pieces (a play with songs).

The work is a modern myth about two drifters trying to come to terms with life as they see corruption and violence under the facade of good intentions surrounding them.

There is a little something of interest to the LGBT community both on the stage and behind the scenes in this production.

First, since we've already covered gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, making an appearance as "The Carnie" is Baby Dee, a postoperative transsexual from New York who has worked as a carnival barker at Coney Island.

As the old saying goes, you haven't lived until you've seen someone on a six-foot high tricycle playing the accordion.

Out of view, though intrinsically affecting our view, is Trad A. Burns, the lighting director. Openly gay, Burns is one of the top three lighting designers for theme parks, and has recently returned from designing lighting for a show at Disney's newest Japanese theme park. He has been involved with some of the biggest-name shows on and offBroadway when he lived in New York, and now he is based here in Cleveland.

Fugitive Pieces (a play with songs) runs from March 30 to April 14 at Cleveland Public Theatre, 216-631-2727. .

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