"Cloud 9": Gay Couples in 1879 and 1979

Caryl Churchill is an avant-garde playwright in the mold of Ionesco and Samuel Beckett; her plays challenge your notions of plot, characters, and narrative structure itself.  Actually, most of her plays don't really have a plot, but they have a political point. 

Cloud 9, first produced in 1979, was originally advertised as about "sexual confusion," but now it's about gender fluidity.  There are two acts, set in British Africa in 1879 and London in 1979.

British Africa:
Colonial administrator Clive has a perfect relationship with his wife and children, until forbidden desires disrupt things.

He has an affair with Mrs. Saunders, a visiting widow.

His wife Betty (played by a man), is having an affair with his friend Harry Bagley, and is also approached by the governess for a lesbian fling.

Harry has also seduced Clive's10 year old son Edward (played by a woman), the manservant Joshua (black, but played by a white man), and Mrs. Saunders.  When he makes a play for Clive himself, things fall apart.

Fast forward 100 years, but only 25 years have passed for the characters.

Betty (now played by a woman) is recently divorced.

Her son Edward (played by the actor who played Betty in 1875) is gay, and involved in a relationship with Gerry (who played Joshua in 1875).

But he also has an affair with his younger sister Victoria (a doll in 1875).

Victoria is separated from her husband Martin (who played Harry in 1875), and involved with Lin (who played Mrs. Saunders in 1875).  She has a 10-year old daughter (played by a man)

This time everything resolves happily, with both of the gay couples on "Cloud 9."

I didn't actually like the play -- weirdness for the sake of weirdness has never been my thing, and I'm not as shocked by same-sex relationships as the author intended. 

But I liked it more than anything by Ionesco, and it's nice to see two gay couples in the forefront, "sexual confusion" or not.

10 Shirtless Bricks from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"

Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was first performed in 1955, won a Pulitzer Prize, and remains a favorite today, in spite of (or maybe because of) its shrill theatricality: a dysfunctional family yelling about its hidden passions and long-ago traumas.

Like most Tennessee Williams plays, same-sex desire is lurking just below the surface, alluded to but never discussed.

And there's a guy with his shirt off:  Brick, son of the dying Big Daddy, an alcoholic ex-footballer who won't sleep with his wife, Maggie (the Cat on the Hot Tin Roof), maybe because he's gay -- he was in love with his old teammate, Skipper, who committed suicide.

In the 1950s, of course, the implication of gayness is a major scandal.  Big Daddy tiptoes around it, but Maggie shrieks it out.

The 1958 movie closeted Brick and Skipper even more: "I told him he was weak!" Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor) shrieks.

But Paul Newman as Brick famously walked around in pajama bottoms, leading most contemporary productions to give us shirtless Bricks.

1. Top photo: Max Falls at Utah State.  Even closeted, Cat is quite a heady mix for Utah.

2. Benjamin Walker in Pittsburgh shows us some Brick abs.






3.The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company surprisingly gives us bald, middle-aged Brick with a little belly.  But that's how he's written, right?

4.  Jonathan Shirey at the Susquehanna Stage Company. An ex-athlete?  He's got a bodybuilder's physique!

5.  Chapter, a multi-art cultural space in Cardiff, Wales, gives us a rather slim Brick.

More after the break

Elephant Men

Joseph or John Merrick (1862-1890) suffered from severe facial and body deformities that caused him to be exploited by Victorian showmen, put on display as "The Elephant Man."  A physician named Frederick Trewes arranged for him to live at London Hospital, visited him daily, and became a close friend.  His case drew the interest of London society, and near the end of his life he was receiving many visitors, including the Princess Alexandra.












Bernard Pomerance's 1979 play The Elephant Man makes Merrick's story into a commentary on the nature of beauty.  It ups the gay subtext and the heterosexism (a kindly lady even disrobes so that Merrick can see her nude body).  However, since Pomerance stated that the actor playing Merrick should not wear any prosthetics, conveying the deformities only through body and facial movements, there is plenty of opportunity for beefcake.

Dale Moore in the Chester, New Jersey production.

Robert Bell in Adelaide performs with a photo of the real John Merrick.

You don't see many productions in high schools, as the role is very demanding, but A. J. Black at Lehi High School in Utah is giving it a try.

Windward Community College in Hawaii.

Tom Cornish, Queens Theater.

More "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" Beefcake

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a 2012 play about two middle-aged siblings living in one of those Chekhov plays about nouveau-poor aristocrats struggling to survive financially on a doddering estate (it doesn't matter which one -- they're basically all like that).  Their movie-star younger sister arrives with her boytoy Spike, who strips to his unmentionables and draws everyone's erotic interest.

It won't be playing on the high school circuit anytime soon, but it's popular in colleges and community theaters.  The trick is finding a Spike who is hot enough to realistically draw the attention of all three siblings.

1. Jefferson Farber at the Arena Stage in Washington DC has the basket and biceps, but the tattoos are a definite drawback, and what's with the smirk?

2.  The Gulfshore Playhouse in Naples, Florida tells us who all of the other actors are, but refuses to reveal the actor who plays Spike.  Pity -- handsome face, sculpted physique, hangs to the left.

3.  Joburg Theatre in South Africa.  Nice pecs and abs, nice hair, no basket.

4. Citadel Theater in Illinois.  Is this the boytoy or the brother?

5. The Arts Commons in Calgary.  Nice muscular frame, impressive basket, but he's got to do something about that hair.

6.  Jefferson McDonald as a shaggy-handsome prince Spike in Cincinnati.

7. Berkeley Rep.  He sort of looks like Dick Sargent from Bewitched, who used to go cruising with my friend Randall the Muscle Bear.

8. Palisades Theater. Kyle Jordan is practically perfect.

9. Harlequin Theatre, Olympia, Washington.  Too skinny.

10. Stephan Mark Lucas in Smithtown, New York. 








See also: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a 2012 comedy by Christopher Durang that brings Chekhov and beefcake to rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

If you need to know the plot:

Vanya and Sonia are a middle aged brother and sister, one gay and the other straight, who live together on the family farm and complain about their cherry orchard.

Their life of complacency and complaining is disrupted when their young movie star sibling Masha arrives, with her uber-muscular boy toy Spike, who is allergic to clothes.







Spike is always played by a mega hunk, who spends most of his stage time in his Calvin Kleins, thrusting his you-know-what at whoever is sitting nearby.

Everyone starts flirting with Spike and competing with each other to see who can complain the loudest.  Old rivalries surface.

After a disastrous party with a Snow White theme, Masha announces that she's going to sell the house and kick Vanya and Sonia out on their cherry orchards.

Meanwhile Sonia gets a date, Vanya gets a backer for his play, The Seagull, and Spike cheats on Masha.

Masha gives Spike the boot, decides not to sell the house, and the three siblings live happily ever after, just like in a Chekhov play.

Except for the gay character.

And the happy ending.

And the beefcake.

Did I mention the beefcake?

Marat Sade: We Want a Revolution

Want to see a man sitting naked in a bathtub for 2 hours?

I thought so.

You'll have to see Marat/Sade, a 1964 play by Peter Weiss set in the Charenton Asylum in France in 1808, where the inmates, led by the Marquis de Sade, are putting on a play about the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat.

Marat was a radical journalist, a vocal supporter of the Revolution.  He was assassinated on July 13, 1793 while taking a medicinal bath for a mysterious skin condition.  Since then, he has become an icon for revolutionaries.

He's the subject of the famous painting The Death of Marat, by Jacques-Louis David.

Back to the play: in 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte has become the Emperor of France.  The asylum director, Coulmier, supports the new administration, but the inmates, led by the Marquis de Sade, believe that no political regime effects real change.

We've got new generals our leaders are new
They sit and they argue and all that they do
Is sell their own colleagues and ride upon their backs
And jail them and break them and give them all the axe

It all sounds hyper-political, and in fact Marat/Sade was understood as an indictment of the Vietnam War, Communism, and all sorts of local politics. And for gay liberation:

We want our rights and we don't care how
We want our revolution now

The film version (1967) features Patrick Magee as the Marquis de Sade and Ian Richardson as Marat.

Sade, by the way, wrote the 100 Days of Sodom, about libertines trying all of the sexual acts they could think of.