Even during the counterculture movements of The Sixties, homosexuals still found themselves third world citizens denied even traditional avenues for civil rights. Assimilative organizations, attempts at persuasive engagement and respectful protest were met with indifference at best and repulsion at worst. But it all would change in 1969 with “the hairpin drop heard ‘round the world,” better known as The Stonewall Riots. What began as a police raid on a mob owned gay bar quickly turned into one of the biggest coming out political actions in United States’ history. The night long event set into motion a chain reaction that resulted in nearly a decade long struggle that culminated in the Harvey Milk led defeat of State Senator John Briggs’ infamous Proposition 6.

One could argue that Boys and Torch Song are neat bookends for those times by taking us from the precipice of that fateful police raid to the faint whispering of a patient known only as Zero. So, the simultaneously running productions are a happy coincidence for all students in search of the touchstones of gay theatre’s journey into the mainstream. I just wish I could report that the execution lived up to the material. Despite solid casting, a genuine understanding of the subjects’ core truth and being imminently watchable, both productions share a series of directorial failings that can be attributed to their orchestrators’ ambitions and cumulative lack of attention to detail. With the stunning exception of Veronica Russell’s miraculous shoestring budget costumes for Boys, the lack of precision directorial choices of Frederick Mead and Andrew Crusse become so overwhelming that they threaten to derail the important messages contained in the plays. The fact that the shows survive is a testament to a number of performances and the strength of the actual texts. So, despite tremendous reservations, I am recommending both shows, if only for the portal they give to their times.

The Boys in the Band

Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking 1968 play, The Boys in the Band, offers a glimpse of a secret life through a birthday party given by a group of homosexual men for their friend Harold. Their cloistered gathering takes a dark turn into Albee country when the conflicted Alan arrives to seek out former college chum and party host, Michael. Despite being somewhat dated, Boys still boasts ferocious dialogue, genuine pathos and proves a potent rage poem for the self-loathing and loneliness of the men who had yet to hear that hairpin drop. Director Frederick Mead has assembled a cast, including Kyle Daigrepont and Jason George, that acquits itself fairly well, hits the shock of the bitchy humor, and seems tuned into the ache at the work’s center.

It is the logistics that almost undo him. Mead sets himself the challenge of a small, intimate space. Working The Shadowbox in the round, the director lays out a cramped Manhattan apartment with the ostensible purpose of creating both intimacy and discomfort. Much like The Elm Theatre’s work, he wants to put us into the middle of the action: voyeurs of a forbidden lifestyle. It is the right choice, and should transform the audience into Alan: uncomfortable entering a space where we are not welcomed. However, more often than not, Mead’s blocking works against his choice of layout. It is obstructive to the relationships and power dynamics. Corners are left unused, traffic jams go unheeded and, most crucially, Mead simply has his actors moving too much. It is not that the playing area is too small. It is not properly utilized. In a space as intimate as this Boys’ onstage apartment, one inch equals one mile. Actors should have been given their marks, drilled not to square up on one another, and aided in finding justifications for their limited mobility.

For these very reasons, two incredibly tense confrontations are dissipated in their presentation. On the first occasion, Robert Facio’s Alan towers over Richard Meyer’s fey Emory during their curt first-act exchange and blocks our view of the faces of both actors. I realize that working in the round means never being able to see everything, but it should not mean seeing nothing. Any facial contempt, fear or rage in the scene is lost to an entire bank of seats. In the second act, an otherwise fine Marshall Harris is allowed to wander to and fro during his execution of unfaithful Larry’s forceful manifesto of promiscuity. The monologue lost half its power with needless pacing through the space without purpose. Had he stayed still, we might have seen what a fine job he was doing. These were not isolated failings but microcosmic moments of what ails this Boys. You can only blame actors so much. After a while, it becomes clear someone was allowing those technical choices.

Still, Mead and costumer Veronica Russell do something truly marvelous: they transport us. They dream up a costume design that is the period in hyperdrive right down to the exquisitely picked ascots more than one of the characters sports. Russell does exactly what a designer is supposed to do: she helps tell the story. Without a word having to be uttered, we believe we are in the world that Crowley has crafted. Without the pitch perfect sartorial choices framing time, much of the dialogue would seem overly dramatic or downright silly. The costumes are the ultimate reminder of not only where we are, but also why it is. When combined with the strength of the text and the commitment of the players, Boys’ shortcomings often disappear, and we are staggered by the loneliness, isolation, and despair faced by men living in the supposedly most liberated time of the last century.

Torch Song Trilogy

Torch Song Trilogy is the story of Jewish drag queen Arnold Beckoff and his search for love, respect and normality on his own terms. Through the three plays that make up the trifecta, Arnold struggles with the indecision of his conflicted bisexual lover, Ed, the rivalry of Ed’s neurotic wife Laurel, and the intolerance of his own mother, played by feisty pitbull Tracey Collins. For almost three hours, we watch Arnold endure the indignity of being “the other woman,” the grief of losing his partner, Alan, and the anxieties of being a single father to his foster child, David. Unlike Boys, the play’s central figure is comfortable with who he is. It is the rest of the world that squirms. Arnold’s struggle is not to come to terms with himself but confront those for whom his honesty is too much to bear. Torch Song is three plays that differ in style and tone: a cabaret hybrid, a bedroom comedy of manners and finally, a domestic drama tempered by Arnold and David’s levity. However, taken as a whole, they are about one journey.

It is a tricky project. While each individual show appears a simple affair, they cumulatively present wildly divergent problems to solve. This ultimately proves too much for director Andrew Crusse to master. Either through a shortage of time or resources, this presentation by Delta Productions lacks the necessary snap to prevent the long evening from dragging in places, suffers from the inability to motivate its traffic, and inexplicably clutters spaces to the point of hindering the actors.  This last point was particularly infuriating, as both a centered dressing room table in the first play and an ill-angled couch in the third forced actors in important scenes into positions that minimized their own dramatic impact. The latter incident bordered on galling, as it forced Collins to deliver a gut wrenching speech about grief with her back to the audience. Worse, unlike Boys, no effort is made to present the play in its time frame. So much of the discussion seems bewildering in today’s context. Rather than being the creatures of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the characters simply seemed clueless to the world of marriage rights, accepting parents, and the still unresolved AIDS crisis.

That is a shame, because Crusse has in Chris Wecklein a lead worthy of the chosen material and surrounded him with gifted performers like Andrew Farrier and Wendy Miklovic. Wecklein has a role he was meant to play in Arnold. He is a showy, audience-pleaser who desperately needs a better artifice constructed around him. He tempers Arnold’s catty neurosis with genuine hurt and self-deprecating likability. Along with the lovely chemistry between him and Collins, Wecklein’s scenes with Dustin Gaspard as Alan are an engaging mixture of tenderness and affable frustration. Pay close attention to the big ham with the bigger heart, you might see the show that could have been.

Still, there is a hell of a conversation unfolding on St. Claude Avenue. Rarely do audiences get the opportunity to see two shows in a genuine dialogue with one another. If you can move past a certain lack of rigor, you might recognize that the journey is not only within the two plays but also between them. Somewhere after Crowley’s desperate men exited the stage back into the shadows of American life, something changed in our country that allowed Fierstein’s work to attempt to break into its light. We have a ways to go, but at least we know how far we have come.