Love! Valour! Compassion!
[In the following mixed review of Love! Valour! Compassion!, Karfér states that "McNally shows little originality or audacity."]
The progress and regress of homosexual life is usually left to the political propagandists on either side. You can get a more accurate (and less shrill) summary by comparing two comedies, staged 25 years apart.
In 1969, Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band featured a group of nine gay men in the crosscurrents of professional and social life. Some were tragic, some funny, some faithful, some promiscuous. Almost all stayed in the closet. "Show me a happy homosexual," said a character, articulating the play's most famous line, "and I'll show you a gay corpse."
In 1995, Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! features a group of eight gay men in the crosscurrents of professional and social life. Some are tragic, some funny, some faithful, some promiscuous. None has hidden his sexual identity; no need for dissembling in our enlightened era. That's the good news. The bad news, of course, is the spread of AIDS. The plague throws its shadow across everyone present.
The action takes place at a summer house over three long weekends, Memorial Day, July Fourth and Labor Day. The place is owned by Gregory (Stephen Bogardus), a regal dancemeister suffering from choreographer's block. This creative crisis has not diminished his generous nature, however, and he regularly opens his door to a gaggle of friends. Chief among them is the hyperthyroid Buzz Hauser (Nathan Lane), connoisseur of musicals and monger of gossip: "You mean her Ladyship Derek Jacobi and Dame Ian McKellen?"
The other visitors are markedly quieter; then again, junkyard dogs produce fewer decibels than Buzz. Among the guests: vile-tempered pianist John; his kindly, lisping twin brother James (both played by John Glover); uptight lawyer Perry (Anthony Heald); his WASPish lover Arthur (John Benjamin Hickey); young, blind Bobby (Justin Kirk); and overheated Latino dancer Ramon (Randy Becker).
As the play unfolds, characters and crises begin to define themselves. Bobby professes his loyalty to Gregory, a man whose work he can never witness. But all Ramon has to do is touch him and the sightless youth succumbs. Perry and Arthur bicker constantly. Yet the couple would rather fight than switch; arguments and jealousies cement their relationship.
Throughout most of the action Buzz is loveless at the top of his lungs. HIV positive, he prefers to keep the world at bay—until the AIDS-afflicted James abruptly catches his eye and heart. Gregory finds that he can no longer do the leaps and arabesques of last year. Is he also suffering from the fatal virus? No, he's just another victim of that universal disease, middle age.
Clearly, McNally is offering two proposals.
1. Homosexuals are different in their humor (most of the group wants to don women's costumes for a campy ballet, in order to raise money for a favorite charity). They vary as well from the straight world in their position as outsiders, and, in this era, their terror of early death. Special attention must be paid to their predicament.
2. Homosexuals are just like everyone else. They are faithful and they sleep around, they drink too much and regret it the next morning, they prize youth and they grow old. If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh?
Amid all this moral confusion, Joe Mantello's direction is unfailingly lucid; Loy Arcenas' set uses the best of Monet and Van Gogh; John Kilgore's sound design truly evokes the natural aura of summer and fall; and the playwright offers some poignant moments and coruscating lines. He has also written some inexcusably tasteless ones ("This is like Adolf Hitler shtooping Anne Frank").
Even at his infrequent best, though, McNally shows little originality or audacity. For all its psychological candor and physical nudity, Love! Valour! Compassion! is actually nothing more than The Big Chill seen from the other side of the bed, complete with nostalgic angst and bitchy asides.
As the holy fool, Lane is a standup, situp, liedown comic par excellence; his most pedestrian speeches are given unexpected emphases and uncanny timing. Of the supporting crew, Bogardus is the most credible and Heald the least. Nevertheless, the character of Perry engaged my sympathy from start to finale. He is the only one—speaking of taste—who steadfastly refuses to wear a tutu for Act III's inevitable and cloying after dinner mince.
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