[We're witnessing,] especially in the theatre, a caricatured homosexuality, based on defensive pride and sneering hostility.

We have no word that stands in the same relation to homosexuality as "macho" stands to heterosexuality—or rather we have plenty of such words, but they're all so repellent I'd rather invent a neutral one: Let's call this attitude "gayist."…

[Innaurato] seems to me to best exemplify the new gayism….

At first glance, his work seems pre-rather than post-camp—that is, Gemini in particular is conventionally naturalistic, with the gay "problem" dealt with on a straightforward plot level….

What makes it seem pre-camp is the treatment of homosexuality as a subject rather than an attitude, as naturalistic "reality" rather than stylish posturing. But what actually makes it post-camp is that it takes the attitudes and posturing of camp and integrates them into a conventional theatrical structure. If this play had been written before camp, it probably would have been a propagandistic appeal for "tolerance"—"gays are people too." Instead, it assumes that gay is not merely okay, it's better than straight—an extension of camp's attitude that straight is not merely intolerant but often ridiculous.

Gemini is structured largely in pejorative polarities—not only gay and straight, but young and old, son and father, thin and fat, assimilated and ethnic, sensitive and vulgar—to such an extent that one feels Innaurato is less interested in creating credible characters than in utilizing stock characters who will allow him to express his disgust. The gay protagonist is virtually the only character untouched by contempt—he seems surrounded by a kind of nimbus—and the fact that this contempt is often disguised as affection makes it all the more disturbing. I think of the lusty neighborhood mama, for instance, who bounces around the stage as if the playwright were enraptured by her vulgar, fleshy, joie de vivre. Actually, with her crude sexual appetites, big boobs, and hysterical bitchiness, she's straight out of camp. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Innaurato were to say he warmly regarded her as "larger than life," but I'd be astonished to hear any woman say the mama's anything but hyperbolically gross. Camp's idealization of women is but a subtler form of contempt.

Even more distressing than Innaurato's apparent assumption that one form of sexuality is superior to another … is the death of feeling at the heart of his work. Unlike [Christopher] Durang, whose characters have no emotions whatsoever (only a certain obsessive, almost manic selfishness), Innaurato at least grants feelings to his homosexual protagonist. As for the rest, oh they may feel, but Innaurato feels nothing for them—nothing, that is, but scorn. That lusty mama, for instance, supposedly treated with humorous affection, is actually so monstrous she drives her son to attempt suicide (hah hah), and her own suicide attempt becomes a jovial comic turn (hah hah hah). And for a kicker—such is the playwright's love for his characters—we're treated to an epileptic fit as comic shtick: that one has the audience in the aisles.

But the characters in Gemini seem positively adorable when compared to the loathsome gallery in Benno Blimpie—with the exception of poor, sensitive Benno, of course, who's supposed to arouse our compassion for all the suffering victims of a vermin-infested world. Benno is fat, unloved, and eating himself to death, and who wouldn't, surrounded by a despicably nagging mother, a hatefully bullying father, a perverted grandfather, and an obnoxious teen-age bitch who'd cause any man to choose either celibacy or homosexuality (and all of whom, incidentally, are considered as laughable as they are monstrous).

That Benno is gang-raped isn't enough—the gang then stuffs dogshit in his mouth. Indeed, and this is the central point, it's clear that Benno actually wallows in every new degradation for the opportunity it allows him to feel sorry for himself. "Talent and sensitivity don't matter in this world," he moans, "only looks and sex." (It's revealing that Benno sees sensitivity and sex as opposites.) Poor Benno. Despicably ugly everyone else.

Yet the play is presented as Benno's interior monologue—an alternation between Benno's memories of his family life and his exposition to the audience—and I can see no reason for taking Benno's account at face value. On the contrary, he doesn't see the cruelty in people; he sees people cruelly—they're credible only as figments of his self-serving sado-masochistic fantasies. So the real monstrosity isn't in the characters who oppress Benno but in Benno himself—there's more in-humanity in his revenge than in those who ridicule and reject him.

I'm not arguing that ugliness is an unacceptable subject for art. Innaurato's vision of the ugliness of life seems to match [Jonathan] Swift and [Louis-Ferdinand] Celine in scope (if not in depth), but the crucial difference is that Swift and Celine regarded themselves as sharing in the human condition, whereas Innaurato regards Benno as exceptional. One couldn't even count the plays that have portrayed family life, in particular, as hateful—it may well be—but that doesn't mean the plays themselves have to be hateful. Benno likes to draw, but "Benno wasn't interested in drawing people," he says of himself—"he knew what they looked like." If this is what Innaurato really thinks people look like, I can't help wishing he wouldn't be interested in drawing them either.