Brian Edward has ‘The Last Word’ channeling Quentin Crisp at City Theatre
Brian Edward’s first impression of Quentin Crisp — author, actor, raconteur, gay icon — came from Crisp playing Queen Elizabeth I in the 1992 film “Orlando.”
Crisp was 83 playing a 67-yearold queen.
“It was such an interesting and brilliant casting choice,” Edward recalls. “I thought, ‘This is somebody I need to know.’”
Edward has been on the case ever since that first encounter, and now he will get into the head and heart of the man he has so long admired.
The world premiere of the solo show “Quentin Crisp: The Last Word,” the first biographical work created with the support of the Crisp estate, is Thursday through Feb. 16 at City Theatre’s Hamburg Theatre on the South Side.
Edward, a writer and actor who hosts the ’Burgh Vivant online video show, will channel Crisp, who caused a bit of a sensation with the publication of his book and the subsequent film, “The Naked Civil Servant.”
The late native Brit recounted his earlier life as an out gay man when it was illegal and his time as a nude model and prostitute. He later was embraced in the U.K. and U.S., where he became a popular late-night talk-show guest.
Edward was born in Pittsburgh but spent his formative years on the road, with his father in the armed services. He was in the Berkshires, working in theater as a teenager, and found himself “hanging out with older role models, like Quentin Crisp, which was a real benefit,” he said of that time in his life.
“I found ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ at a very impressionable time,” he continued. “Since then, I pursued everything he had written from that time. There’s a lot of wisdom and hard truths. At the time, I looked at it all very cynically. Now that I’m almost 40, looking back, he was right, and he’s
been with me a good 20 years at least.”
He can conjure Crisp-isms at will, such as: Never sweep the place where you live, because after the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.
We may laugh, Edward said, “but at the core, he was saying, don’t waste time on trivial things. Look inward — he talks a lot about looking inward and deciding how to deal with the world.”
As a fan, Edward has kept up with the goings-on of the Quentin Crisp estate, and he learned about the publication of the posthumous autobiography, dictated to author and colleague Phillip Ward and published as “The Last Word” in 2017. Ward is the executor of the estate.
Crisp died in 1999, and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his passing, Ward began work on a adapting “The Last Word” into a play. The work includes the revelation that Crisp at age 90 had revealed that he was not a gay man but rather a transgender woman who was attracted to men.
Edward reached out to Ward to do a phone interview, and the first time they spoke, it turned into a two-hour conversation.
“A side note,” offers Edward. He
recognized the phone number when Ward called as one Crisp kept listed in the Manhattan phone book. Crisp would answer all callers, including some death threats, to which he would reply, “Would you like an appointment?”
Edward and Ward began chatting about the play, and “I think what really impressed him,” Edward said, “was, one, my knowledge of Quentin Crisp and, two, the respect I had for the legacy,” Edward said. “I’m 38 years old, and I am the next generation that needs to be carrying on the legacy of Quentin Crisp.”
Together they have woven a one-man show, much in the way Jay Presson Allen adapted the 1989 play “Tru” from the words and works of Truman Capote.
The play is helmed by Pittsburgh-based Spencer Whale, who has directed here for Front Porch Theatricals, Off the Wall Productions and City Theatre.
Plans are in the works to take “The Last Word” to New York, where Quentin Crisp lived most of his life, but Edward lobbied to show it first in “my backyard,” where he has worked to get it ready for a next step.
His hope is to spread Quentin Crisp’s words far and wide, particularly the pioneer’s take on LBGTQ rights.
“He was so ahead of his time, because we are still marching for equality on so many levels,” Edward said.
As Crisp would say, “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.”
Or, as the man who would be Quentin Crisp translates, “You should never want to be anybody’s equal. You should want to be your own self.”