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McNally's 'Some Men' at PTC
Dan Rottenberg
Out of the closet (and into a bigger box)
DAN ROTTENBERG
At a gay wedding set in the present (when else?), the nervous spouses quarrel over who was supposed to bring the rings for the ceremony, causing one groom to exclaim, “The Bible is right: Two men living together is completely unnatural!” This opening scene promptly dissolves into an ambitious evening-long smorgasbord of flashbacks, vignettes and period songs, stretching back to 1932, that taken together constitute a salute to the 20th-Century gay men who survived “the years of secrecy and oppression” to reach the astonishing point where gays can joke nervously about marriage just like everyone else.
With remarkable economy and wit, playwright Terrence McNally telescopes virtually every gay phenomenon of the past 50 years, from drag queens and the Stonewall uprising of 1969 to AIDS, gay adoption and Internet chat rooms.
Almost everything about this production is first-rate: the versatile cast of eight men and two women, each in a variety of roles; the use of songs by a dozen composers (Gershwin, Berlin, Weill et al) to establish period and mood; the lighting and atmospherics; the capable pianist (Tom Judson) and the confident direction of Philip Himberg that compels our attention for two and a half hours with nary a dead spot.
Preaching to the choir
McNally’s script is by turns incisive, entertaining, funny and poignant as far as it goes. Unfortunately it does not go very far, because in Some Men McNally takes the expedient and well-worn path of preaching to the choir, instead of striking out in some new and intellectually challenging direction. In one of the opening numbers, for example, two female divas celebrate gay liberation by singing, “It’s raining men! Hallelujah!” Precisely why straight women should celebrate this apparent new abundance of unavailable men— as indeed they should— is an interesting question but goes unaddressed here.
For a play that purports to celebrate gay marriage, Some Men is remarkably silent about gay domestic life. In the course of the play we witness gay men interacting at a wedding, a party, a bathhouse, a Harlem cabaret, a gay bar, a hotel room, a bedroom, a hospital room, a funeral, a therapy group, a political demonstration, an airport terminal and a boardwalk. One place we do not see them is at home, in a domestic setting.
Where are the villains?
The other ingredient missing from Some Men is dramatic conflict. There may be intrinsic drama in relationships between the sexes and between good men and bad men, but the men of Some Men (and even the women— even a nun, for Pete’s sake) are almost uniformly sympatico. The forces of evil— a repressive society and its police— are spoken of but never seen.
The play’s most dramatic scene is a confrontation between a husband and wife as he leaves their family for his gay lover. (“That’s all this is about,” she cries at the impending breakup of her home— “thinking with your dick.”) The drama of this moment stands out for what I suspect is (dare I suggest it?) a natural reason: The inborn differences between the genders are greater and more mysterious (and consequently probably more dramatic and interesting) than the differences among gay men. (In Some Men the process of finding love is less a matter of seduction than negotiation.) McNally’s take on such an issue might be enlightening, but in Some Men he merely sticks to recycled and conventional gay mantras. Maybe next play.
The mysteries of sexuality
To be sure, McNally’s script does address the problems inherent in getting what you wish for: “We live our lives in these little boxes,” his drag queen (a wonderfully bitchy turn by John Glover) observes, “and then we break free and find ourselves in a bigger box.” Nor does McNally shrink from the downside of unrestricted male-on-male sex: “Some of us have feelings that last more than 30 seconds,” one character remarks. But for the most part Some Men is a theatrical banquet that is immensely satisfying while you consume it but leaves you intellectually hungry once it’s through.
After hundreds of millions of years on this earth, we humans have barely begun to scratch the surface knowledge of our sexuality. Gays and lesbians, as an oppressed sexual minority on the front lines of this issue, will play an important role in expanding our understanding (as indeed they already have). But Some Men does little to advance that conversation. We may have arrived at an age when (as the Philadelphia journalist Charles MacNamara once put it) the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name can’t stop blabbing all over the place. But the age of honest dialogue between gays and straights remains, at least as of this world premiere, a bridge too far.
To view responses to this review, click here.
DAN ROTTENBERG
At a gay wedding set in the present (when else?), the nervous spouses quarrel over who was supposed to bring the rings for the ceremony, causing one groom to exclaim, “The Bible is right: Two men living together is completely unnatural!” This opening scene promptly dissolves into an ambitious evening-long smorgasbord of flashbacks, vignettes and period songs, stretching back to 1932, that taken together constitute a salute to the 20th-Century gay men who survived “the years of secrecy and oppression” to reach the astonishing point where gays can joke nervously about marriage just like everyone else.
With remarkable economy and wit, playwright Terrence McNally telescopes virtually every gay phenomenon of the past 50 years, from drag queens and the Stonewall uprising of 1969 to AIDS, gay adoption and Internet chat rooms.
Almost everything about this production is first-rate: the versatile cast of eight men and two women, each in a variety of roles; the use of songs by a dozen composers (Gershwin, Berlin, Weill et al) to establish period and mood; the lighting and atmospherics; the capable pianist (Tom Judson) and the confident direction of Philip Himberg that compels our attention for two and a half hours with nary a dead spot.
Preaching to the choir
McNally’s script is by turns incisive, entertaining, funny and poignant as far as it goes. Unfortunately it does not go very far, because in Some Men McNally takes the expedient and well-worn path of preaching to the choir, instead of striking out in some new and intellectually challenging direction. In one of the opening numbers, for example, two female divas celebrate gay liberation by singing, “It’s raining men! Hallelujah!” Precisely why straight women should celebrate this apparent new abundance of unavailable men— as indeed they should— is an interesting question but goes unaddressed here.
For a play that purports to celebrate gay marriage, Some Men is remarkably silent about gay domestic life. In the course of the play we witness gay men interacting at a wedding, a party, a bathhouse, a Harlem cabaret, a gay bar, a hotel room, a bedroom, a hospital room, a funeral, a therapy group, a political demonstration, an airport terminal and a boardwalk. One place we do not see them is at home, in a domestic setting.
Where are the villains?
The other ingredient missing from Some Men is dramatic conflict. There may be intrinsic drama in relationships between the sexes and between good men and bad men, but the men of Some Men (and even the women— even a nun, for Pete’s sake) are almost uniformly sympatico. The forces of evil— a repressive society and its police— are spoken of but never seen.
The play’s most dramatic scene is a confrontation between a husband and wife as he leaves their family for his gay lover. (“That’s all this is about,” she cries at the impending breakup of her home— “thinking with your dick.”) The drama of this moment stands out for what I suspect is (dare I suggest it?) a natural reason: The inborn differences between the genders are greater and more mysterious (and consequently probably more dramatic and interesting) than the differences among gay men. (In Some Men the process of finding love is less a matter of seduction than negotiation.) McNally’s take on such an issue might be enlightening, but in Some Men he merely sticks to recycled and conventional gay mantras. Maybe next play.
The mysteries of sexuality
To be sure, McNally’s script does address the problems inherent in getting what you wish for: “We live our lives in these little boxes,” his drag queen (a wonderfully bitchy turn by John Glover) observes, “and then we break free and find ourselves in a bigger box.” Nor does McNally shrink from the downside of unrestricted male-on-male sex: “Some of us have feelings that last more than 30 seconds,” one character remarks. But for the most part Some Men is a theatrical banquet that is immensely satisfying while you consume it but leaves you intellectually hungry once it’s through.
After hundreds of millions of years on this earth, we humans have barely begun to scratch the surface knowledge of our sexuality. Gays and lesbians, as an oppressed sexual minority on the front lines of this issue, will play an important role in expanding our understanding (as indeed they already have). But Some Men does little to advance that conversation. We may have arrived at an age when (as the Philadelphia journalist Charles MacNamara once put it) the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name can’t stop blabbing all over the place. But the age of honest dialogue between gays and straights remains, at least as of this world premiere, a bridge too far.
To view responses to this review, click here.
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