Provincetown’s rightful claim to being so instrumental in the birth of the American Theater seems even more secure now that David Drake has taken on the role of standard bearer. Since he stepped into role as the Artistic Director of The Provincetown Theater earlier this year he has started to fill the place with his insatiable passion and endless energy that all came to wonderful fruition this past week with his emotionally charged production of Love, Valor & Compassion.
Terrence MacNally’s Tony Award winning masterful classic play so accurately portrays a gay community coping with how the ferocious onslaught of AIDS sideswiped the feeling of newly gained equality and freedom they were just beginning to enjoy.
Set over the summer of 1994, starting with Memorial Day and ending before Fall sets in on Labor Day, it’s the story of a close-knit group of friends, and a couple of younger lovers, who congregate for long weekends in a lake house in Upstate New York.
The host is Gregory (David Drake) an aging choreographer who is really the center of the group and the story too. He deeply resents that he now has physical limitations to his ex-dancer’s body, and has a newish much younger blind boyfriend Bobby (Tommy Walsh) to help him retain some of his youth.
Arthur (Mark Boucher) and Perry (Scott Cunningham) are the solid long-term ‘married’ couple of the group with their corporate jobs and their very regular routine lives which are in need of being rescued from sheer boredom.
John (Peter Gregus) is a very bitter and cynical British musical accompanist who insists on bringing his latest young flame, who this year is a fiery Puerto Rican called Ramon (Adam Ross) that very few of the others can keep their eyes off. However when Ramon ‘strays’ one night it is in fact young Bobby who he choses to seduce in the kitchen. The two of them also add a much needed younger, and future, generation, aspect into the story.
Then like a whirlwind, into this group sweeps Buzz (Justin D. Quackenbush) an outrageous fanatical show-business queen who once had a short-lived relationship with John, and has been on the hunt for a boyfriend ever since. Buzz is the only one of group who is currently HIV+ , information which he shares with everyone, and is using this as the reason to lead the fullest (and loudest) life he can.
His life will actually turn a whole 360 degrees later in the story when John’s HIV+ rather ill twin brother James (also played by Gregus) turns up ostensibly to die.
MacNally’s powerful narrative of how the summer shapes and re-defines all these men’s lives through the course of these few months is a real testament to how love and friendship can survive and even prosper through such extraordinary pain and loss. In his character-driven multi-layed story he, and the actors, have shaped men that we can all relate too so easily, although for many of us in our community we can only do so by re-living our own personal pains of that period.
Full credit to Drake wearing his director’s hat (assisted by Myra Slotnik) for getting perfect performances from his entire cast who all simply excelled themselves in their roles. Quackenbush had the most showiest of roles but the fact he managed to steal all his scenes is more a testimony to the fact that he put his own imprint on his own performance and carefully avoided making it stereotype cliche (as Jason Alexander did in the movie adaptation). He is a star in the making.
MacNally was in the audience for the Cape Cod premiere of his play, which is one of the three seminal plays on AIDS (Normal Heart, and Angels in America being the other two). From where we were sitting, he looked as proud as we were of what we had just witnessed. It’s possible the best theater piece we have ever seen in this Town since we arrived 18 years ago.
July 16 – August 30 Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays @ 7:30 PM Directed by David Drake / Play by Terrence McNally www.provincetowntheater.org
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Labels: 2018, Provincetown Culture, theater review
