Son with gay lover vs. mean mama
HIGH GEAR Page 13
Karamu premieres tough drama
By R. Woodward
Potent is the word for the production at Karamu of Judi Ann Mason's "Happy Birthday.
Daddy," a new play being given its world premiere engagement there through March 18.
Leon Craig, the daddy of the
title, is a quiet, unpretentious well loved by his son and daugh-
individual, a steady family man
ter, who would probably be at peace with the world if he did not
have a wife who seems to be incapable of being at peace with
anybody.
Ethel, the wife, wants to get
ahead and takes it as a personal insult when anyone around her shows any signs of not sharing her grim determination. She works long, hard hours as a nurse, mainly to keep up with payments on the classy house she wanted to have that could not have been bought with her hus: band's salary alone. To her husband and children she never says
that he himself can pretty well take it. But he is angered at how she wields her grim, insulting manner when the children are
most vulnerable.
she's pregnant, out she goes. Benny has been pregnant before and has had an abortion because her husband has insisted that he
will leave her rather than be
coincidence, if it is a coincidence, Karamu's next production, opening March 25th, is
Medea.)
Even though the script needs
"Ethel is such an overpowering creation that she seems to intimidate even the playwright."
Their son Curtis, two months
away from graduating from high school, having been abandoned by a girl-friend, has been consoling himself by having a love affair with a young man he has met named Ritchie. Out of respect for his father he has decided to bring Ritchie home to meet the family.
Ethel tells Curtis, among several other things, that she doesn't have anyone living in her house
who is "lower than a dog."
Her daughter Benny does ot fare much better. A college graduate, she is resented by Ethel for "our home"; she always says "my having gotten married instead of
house." She does not hesitate to quote to the penny the cost of tasteful furniture that she has acquired. She is so relentless that the audience laughs at her at times to keep from squirming in horror.
Having been married to her for
25 years, Leon feels that he understands her pretty well and
Whore's Song funded
HIGHLAND PARK, MI A first ever book dealing with gay content by an openly gay poet has been funded by the Michigan Council For The Arts. The Male
Whore's Song by Guy Summertree Veryzer was published in January by Fallen Angel Press.
Veryzer was born and trained in Detroit as an artist and has shown work at the Detroit Gallery Of Contemporary Crafts, Detroit Artist Market, the 1976 Michigan Craftsmen Exhibit, and Gallery North. Veryzer did the graphics for this, his first published book.
The Male Whore's Song is a loosely connected cycle of poems exploring themes of sexuality and depersonalization-songs of desire and sensuality-with a tone heavy with nostalgia for the symbolist vitality of Rimbaud and Verlaine.
Veryzer now lives in New York City.
The book is available through Fallen Angel Press, 1913 W. McNichols Rd., Highland Park, MI 48203, and thanks to the Michigan Council For The Arts subsidy, cost only $2.95 for the paperback edition.
For the last three years the Michigan Council For The Arts has also funded Writers In The School residency grants for another openly gay poet; but this is the first grant for the publication of a book.
a
trapped. She desperately wants home of her own, and also feels that her father would regard being given a grandchild as being given a wonderful present (The action of the play takes place on his birthday.)
Ethel, who never misses an
opportunity to castigate her sonin-law, stops at one point in the middle of a harangue to calmly inform him that if he hits her, she will have him arrested.
take its bows.
The play is so engrossing that one does not notice until it is over that it has some structural probfinding a good job to help pay for lems -especially in the second the house. Benny has been stay-half. The opening night audience ing in her mother's house was not sure that the play was because she cannot stand being over until the cast came out to alone the several days of every week when her husband is away. The play's own internal logic Making a lot of money doing who seems to demand that Ethel ends knows what (probably someup being either demolished or thing both illegal and danger-left comletely alone,but for some ous). Sweet Black, Benny's reason the playwright cannot husband, gets from his motherin-law an image of domesticity that does not incline him to settle down.
Benny has been feeling ill lately and Ethel tells her that if
bring herself to give Ethel the sort of fate that she is shown making for herself. Ethel is such an overpowering creation that she seems to intimidate even the playwright. (By an interesting
Gay novels
(con't from page 12) depict the promiscuous and/or kinky sex that some gays can fall
into at bath, bar, disco, and the street, sex leading to drugs. sadomasochism, so-called water sports (and defecation as part of sexual activity). fetishes, and weird fantasies; or just blatant pursuit and impersonal consummation between strangers in dim but unprivate areas. Both writers show the varying degrees of bitchiness, often reaching the ultra, that can exist in Gaydom.
As we watch all this through print, we may ask ourselves, how many homosexuals degrade their bodies and most of all their psyche in the name of love and beauty, ending up only with the pursuit of sex; and in their jaded search finding it more and more sterile? Because homosexuals have been ostracized from society, there is a tendency for many of them to reject all of existing sexual morality without creating values of their own. The consequence can be a sexually amoral person--a sexually amoral subculture. Don't we need to use some restraint, don't we need to be more true to ourselves, to cease worshipping Priapus--making him Almighty? This, I think, is what both writers are telling us, Holleran somewhat gently and Kramer some-
what vociferously--and both
effectively.
Yes, this romantic fantasy, and this satire take place in a very specialized portion of the world. in New York City where almost everything is intensified, but doesn't the same scene exist in varying degrees in all gay locales in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus. Toledo....? Go into the baths bars, discos. et al, of these "Heartiand" cities and observe. True, there are exceptions. All gay people are not the same, just as all heterosexuals are not the same. But homosexuals by the very fact of their isolation are special prey to the lack of sexual control described by Holleran and Kramer.
These two writers, not only keen observers of the gay scene but insiders from that scene. have held up mirrors before us. What do we see of ourselves in the mirrors? Do we like what we
see?
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some more work, the highpowered cast, under the smooth, brisk direction of Margaret FordTaylor, keeps the audience com-
pletely enthralled.
Watching Angela Gillespie as Ethel, it is next to impossible to imagine this role being per-
formed more effectivley Seldom has such an excessive character been made so utterly convincing.
and William True, and the role of
Sweet Black is played on different nights by Reginald Reed and Harvey Acree. Bevins and Reed were the performers on the opening night. These two plus Ricky Wilson as Richie, Gwendolyn Frost as Benny and Lebron Jackson as the father made the opening night audience glad that Karamu's Arena Theatre is small. It is seldom such a great pleasure to be able to watch so closely
performances by non-professional players. Each one
thoroughly and has the skill to
obviously understands his part
completely convincing manner. convey what he understands in a
This cast is a vivid reminder
that "non-professional can be
meant as a technical term. A non-
One gets to know Ethel so well that one regards her. not as a fictional character, but as an unavoidable fact of life. The inev-professional actor is someone itable topic of conversation among those who have just seen the show is "Who do you know that she reminds you of?"
The role of Curtis is played on different nights by Jeffrey Bebins
who happens to be making his
living at something else besides his acting. As a cast at Karamu once again, proves, being a non-
professional does not meant that an actor is not a serious and accomplished artist.
Nay to Times' nix of play 'Threads'
by R. Woodward
The production at the Cleveland Play House of Jonathan Boll's new play Threads will have
closed by the time you read this. but in view of the negative criticism it received by Richard Eder in the February 20 issue of the New York Times some comments are in order.
A major failing of many reviewers is an inability to recognize
excellence in works that do not
happen to be either terribly subtle or startlingly innovative.
In the Play House production of Threads there were no selfconscious displays of originality by either the author or the cast. Such displays were not demanded in depicting some trying moments faced by a small working class family in a mill town in South Carolina. What was demanded and what this production showed, was a thorough understanding by the writer and by the cast of what was being depicted. Also needed and also well in evidence, was great professional finesse for keeping the characterizations from seeming at any time false or strained. One way to see how well Jona-
than Bolt has written his characterizations is to compare his script for Threads to Norman Wexler's ghastly screenplay for Saturday Night Fever. Wexler, who also did the ghastly screenplay a few years ago for a movie called Joe, through some personal idiosyncracy cannot help regarding working class people as being quaint oddities. His depictions of them come off as being clumsy caricatures not even redeemed by touches of satirical intelligence
With Bolt, by contrast, one is never in doubt that the author depicting, that he is thoroughly knows the people that he is conversant not only with the nuances of the speech and behavior of these people but also thoroughly conversant with how their minds work.
This knowledge of Bolt's when oonveyed to the cast, was well. understood. The performances in the lead roles by Teresa Wright, James Richards, and Richard Oberlin were major evidence for those who like to argue that there is no subsitute in acting for the same touch gained from years of applying one's theatrical intelligence.
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WRITERS
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