Tony Kushner, he who gave us the modern classic Angels in America, has authored a long title and a very long play -- clocking in at 3 hours, 50 minutes with two intermissions.
The plot goes something like this -- Gus Marcantonio, former longshoreman, union organizer, union boss and dedicated Communist, has called his three children, their assorted partners, and sister to the family townhouse in Brooklyn with the intention of committing suicide. He can only go through with it if the immediate family reaches a consensus -- not a majority, a consensus -- on his decision. No one wants dad to die, and the drama unfolds as they attempt to argue, cajole and humor dad back into gaining a will to live.
But Gus is very depressed. He is convinced he has Alzheimer’s, although we see little proof of that. He is haunted by an agreement he negotiated years ago that guaranteed income for longshoreman with seniority, but cost the jobs of many younger workers who never recovered. He feels his world has deserted him, when true liberals are forced to vote for John Kerry. Still, he keeps busy translating the epistles into Latin.
To fill approximately 250 minutes of stage time, we need lots of subplots, and Kushner provides plenty.
Empty, Gus's daughter, is expecting a child with her wife Sooze. V is the father. While it was assumed that V impregnated Sooze through artificial insemination, we learn that he did it the old fashioned way. Empty isn't digging that.
Meanwhile, Pill, Gus's oldest son and a high school teacher, had an ongoing affair with a Eli, a Yale-graduate hustler, and borrowed $30,000 from Sooze to pay for it. Now Sooze needs the money to support her newborn but he doesn't have it. Pill and Eli desperately want to continue the affair as a sort-of threesome with Paul, Pill's partner, but Paul isn't digging that.
Adam, Empty's ex-husband and Gus's basement tenant, has purchased the townhouse without the children's knowledge and everyone feels betrayed.
Gus's sister Clio (the formidable Brenda Wehle) has been staying in Brooklyn with her brother for the last year since returning from Peru where she might, or might not, have fought with the Shining Path.
Oh the drama. Or lack of believability thereof.
Like his more robust piece Angels in America, there are lots of themes running through The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide...societal change through incrementalism vs nihilism, the failure of the American industrial economy and the human toll it has taken, the nature of relationships, fluidity of sexuality, the right to euthanasia.
But for the intelligent theater-goer, I suggest The Pretentious Gay Playwright's Guide to My Inability to Edit Myself is a more descriptive title. This is Kushner self-absorbed to the extreme.
Still, the play has its moments. The end of Act II is a stunner, where all the various subplots come together and 12-odd characters are fighting and talking over each other. This is how family dynamics work and is deftly directed by Michael Grief. We somehow are able to follow the story and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. If the play had ended there, you might leave feeling you got your money's worth but the it nosedives in Act Three with three more long scenes that lead neither plot nor motivation forward.
Steven Pasquale, from the TV drama Rescue Me, as V is the most real and intriguing of the characters. An aside informs us that his mother died in childbirth, and of all Gus's children he is the one who stayed closest to home. The betrayal we see in him when Gus announces his intention to leave -- for the second time -- is moving and real. Pasquale appeared in last season's Reasons to Be Pretty and is building a nice reputation for himself as a solid New York stage actor. Michael Cristoffer, as Gus, does the best he can with what he has been given. We all get depressed, but his depression doesn't seem to be more than a healthy dose of Zoloft couldn't fix.
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