THEATRE: Matthew Krouse
WHEN men parade naked on stage, there is a tendency to judge them by the size of their genitals; their physique contributes to the value of the performance. Because, with live nudity, the fourth wall of the stage topples and the performance transcends its unreality. It shifts closer to real life.
It’s this transcendence that made the Living Theatre of the 1960s and 1970s the significant cultural moment it became — more than just a room full of naked bodies confessing hippy love and human frailty. The wild, rebellious 1950s were over. It was time to throw off that bad attitude, strip down to nothing and, metaphorically speaking, to bleed.
If you ever wondered what became of that generation’s level of expression, then look at Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! (see pic)It’s a bleeding-heart American confession- sessional hiding beneath a veneer of being down-to- earth. But as gay slice-of-life drama it cannot be faulted.
It tells the story of eight men who spend an endless summer beside a lake, in their gracious friend’s country lodge, reminiscing, playing love games and cheating on each other. Much of the time they drift — from naked to clothed, awake to asleep, gay to sad. It’s a lot like real life. Only, it’s theatre.
What defines it as art is its audience. We sit, holding our breath, waiting for the undies to drop. And fortunately, they do just that.
Handsome Kenneth Robinson, the best looking of the lot, spends the most time unclothed. He is strong, well-hung and slightly hairy. He plays Ramon, an ambitious Puerto Rican dancer in love with a blind Texan boy called Bobby (James van Helsdingen). But Bobby is already taken by the host, master choreographer Gregory (Drummond Marais), who is nearing the end of his dancing career (something for those who like their meat more mature).
Bobby is the second cutest in the cast, and he gets about seven minutes in the buff. He’s smooth and pretty and, being blind, can’t see who he gets so he can thank his lucky stars it’s Ramon and Gregory, and not the others in the cast.
The others, however, are all nice white folk with careers. There’s Arthur and Perry (Greg Melvil-Smith and Blaise Koch) still together after 14 years. They’re tired old role models, we’re told. Both sturdy blondes, Melvil-Smith and Koch do a lot of caressing, which is very affirming.
Then there are the Jeckyll twins, played with impeccable difference by Philip Godawa. John Jeckyll is lucky to have Bobby, but they fight and their love life is a wholly unsuccessful SM routine. Then John’s twin arrives on the scene and falls for his brother’s ex-lover, the little Broadway queen Buzz Hauser (Russel Savadier).
It’s all an enormous tangle — which is part of the deeper meaning of the play: it’s a social life so ghettoised and so incestuous that all its personal histories meld into one.
Not every gay man will identify with the social enclave depicted here. Likewise, with the abundance of lesbian jokes, dykes may feel out in the cold.
In the play, death is supposed to be the great equaliser — if you’re physically unattractive. So the fats and fems get Aids, which leaves the pretty young ones looking sullen. Such a heavy reality proves good for the gang because, finally, they all decide to do the cygnet dance from Swan Lake for a local Aids benefit.
The play ends in candlelight, with all these magnificent men in frocks having bared their white, American souls — and their butts — to the world.
@ SPORTS