From December 2007:

Edward the Second is one of the greatest tragedies written by Christopher Marlowe, the only playwright in Shakespeare’s day who could write as well as him (and sometimes better). It is, without a doubt, the most forthright play written about the passion of one man for another man written before the 20th century.

In this very stimulating play, King Edward the Second of England (Marc Vietor) asserts his royal right to live his life as he deems fit, in the company of his lover Gaveston (Kenajuan Bentley). The gentry, resentful of Gaveston’s influence, seek to have Edward’s love, his king-ship, his very life destroyed.

Marlowe is amazingly subtle in sorting out a shifting sense of who is right and wrong in this story. At first the rebellious knights seem justified in their grumbling at Edward: He lets the kingdom fall into terrible disarray as he spends all his time and energy seducing Gaveston.

However later, when, a much more king-like Edward shifts his affections to another lover, Spenser (Randy Harrison of “Queer as Folk”), the lords immediately condemn Spenser as well – making clear that all their high-minded carping against misgovernment is a thinly veiled excuse for viciously persecuting the king simply for his sexuality.

Red Bull Theater’s Artistic Director Jesse Berger directs this premiere production of Garland Wright’s adaptation with great clarity and precision (if with a love of lurid violence that doesn’t quite jibe with the play’s palace intrigues, which are mostly verbal until the final scenes). He and Vietor make Edward’s failings abundantly clear – his tragic flaw isn’t his love of Gaveston, which truly is an overwhelming irrational force he cannot resist, but rather his inability to distinguish between his public and private responsibilities. This sexy, inky-black, Victorian-styled production is one of the more satisfying and thought-provoking evenings of classic theater in recent memory.

From October 2007:

Die Mommie Die! is the fourth New York premiere of a play by playwright Charles Busch I’ve seen, and the second to feature him acting a leading drag role. Saying that it’s the most predictable isn’t that serious a criticism: it’s predictably campy, funny and entertaining.

I know from the Drama Dept. production of his Shanghai Moon the complexity he brings to a drag role he’s created for himself. In comic 1960s Hollywood noir Die Mommie Die! that role is Angela Arden, a fallen singing star trapped in an insufferable marriage to film producer Sol Sussman. Desperate to find happiness with her younger lover, Angela gruesomely murders her husband with the aid of a poisoned suppository, leaving her two children to avenge their father’s death.

The plot is very clearly cribbed from the ancient Greek trilogy Oresteia by Aeschylus –  one the characters even says “mourning becomes this house,” a sly reference to Mourning Becomes Electra, Eugene O’Neill’s adaptation of Oresteia – but it’s Greek tragedy through the prism of 60s Hollywood, right down to an intentionally absurd tacked-on happy ending.

The play is set in 1967, and Busch is very precise about his pop culture references. He successfully catches the sensibility of an entertainment industry trying to keep up with confusing changing times, all the while relying on tried and true techniques. Busch’s own acting style – simultaneously sincere and gleefully artificial – is perfect for capturing the
spirit of “the summer of love.”

Busch sincerely loves artifice and invests every moment he has on-stage with substantial style. He may, for example, deliver a line in the manner of Bette Davis, but it’s not that he’s kidding or parodying Davis. We also take pleasure in the effortless ease with which he moves from one glittering camp archetype to another. They don’t make ’em like this anymore, and there’s only one Charles Busch.

From October 2007:

The early 60s are very much in the air these days – the new Hairspray flick barely scratches the surface. One of the most critically acclaimed television series of 2007 is AMC’s Mad Men, a stylish and smart (if somewhat chilly) nighttime soap about a New York advertising firm in the year 1960. The Beebo Brinker Chronicles surveys that era’s Manhattan from a very different angle: the Greenwich Village lesbian underground of the late 50s and early 60s.

Beebo has more authentic period credentials than the AMC soap: it’s based on a steamy series of lesbian pulp novels actually written between 1957 and 1962. Author Ann Bannon’s melodramatic, noir-ish coming-out tales have been embraced by three generations of gay readers.

These characters may be self-loathing by today’s standards, but Bannon portrayed real gay people in a more rounded and humane way than any other fiction of that era. This was a time when the gays and lesbians of Greenwich Village began breaking the old rules, setting the stage for the Stonewall riots in the late 60s. And Bannon’s descriptions of lesbian love-making are so viscerally sensual that they have been the catalyst for untold sexual awakenings.

Beth and Laura, secret lovers in college, go their separate ways after graduation: Beth marries and has children (much like Bannon herself), Laura moves to New York. They pine for each other, but they find themselves entangled in the web of the titular Beebo Brinker, a loquacious and wildly confident butch barfly with a soft spot for young lesbians fresh off the bus.

Coauthors Linda Chapman (Gertrude and Alice) and Kate Moira Ryan (25 Questions for a Jewish Mother) have done an amazing job of condensing three of Bannon’s books into a dramedy that runs just over ninety minutes. They gently kid the pulpy melodrama of Bannon’s dialogue, while always making sure that her sharp psychological portraits are rendered with lots of flesh on their bones.

Personally, I would have liked a little more over-the-top gusto and a slightly heavier wink in the performances than director Leigh Silverman has elicited from her superb cast. To my taste, David Greenspan portrays older, affluent gay man Jack with just the right juicy fruitiness. Carolyn Baeumier strikes a similarly frisky series of stances as several characters, notably the busty, trashy Lili and embittered, blowsy novelist Nina.

Anna Foss Wilson endows the titular super-butch with abundant swagger and tremendous self-confidence. Marin Ireland plays the seemingly less interesting Laura with great feeling – Laura is the character who changes the most in the course of the story, and Ireland is equally convincing as a naïve girl and an utterly sophisticated woman.