“Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” a challenging three acts
The cacophony of angry voices is a hammer to the head in Tony Kushner’s play at Denver’s Curious Theatre. Then there’s the literal hammering. And the annoying clapping. Sometimes all at once. Angry shouting, hammering, clapping. ★★¼5
The result is a three-act, 3½ hour endurance test, a bombardment of words and ideas built to be challenging.
“The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” Kushner’s 2009 play first conceived as a novel, has for years undergone rewrites. Apparently Kushner shaved 45 minutes off the original piece.
Going forward, it could use more shaving, more focus and more character definition.
Unlike his Pulitzer Prize-winning epic “Angels in America,” this one feels like a work in progress.
Imagine a Brooklyn ItalianAmerican version of Tracy Letts’ 2008 “August: Osage County’s” explosive dinner scene — and extend the verbal smackdown across three acts.
Ostensibly a dysfunctional family drama, billed as an homage to Arthur Miller, the play is laden with heady rants about various -isms. Capitalism, socialism, Catholicism, Marxism, gradualism, mysticism and dispensationalism for starters. Each character’s faith has been shaken. What’s left to believe in? Not the labor union, not the church, not real estate, not marriage nor the freedom to experiment within marriage.
The name-dropping requires indulgence, with Seneca, Mary Baker Eddy, Horace, George Bernard Shaw, Dionysus and Theresa of Avila among the fancy-pants references.
Surprise: All the intellectual arguments in the world can’t rival the patriarch’s regret.
The play’s loud cross-talk can be tedious. The cast’s attempts at Brooklyn accents can be atrocious. Then again, the dense
dialogue can be laughout-loud funny.
“I don’t subscribe to systems any more,” says Aunt Clio, one of the more clearly drawn characters (hilariously played by Anne Oberbroeckling). Clio tried being a Carmelite nun, then tried joining the Maoists in Peru, and now sits in her brother’s house surveying the family wreckage.
The Marcantonio family is headed by Gus, a former longshoreman and labor organizer who gathers the brood to announce his intention to commit suicide. (Lawrence Hecht, longtime Denver Center head of acting, gives a touching, beautifully measured performance as the patriarch.)
Daughter “Empty,” short for Maria Teresa or M.T., is aghast. A tough lesbian with a pregnant wife and exhusband on the scene, she questions Gus’ motivation. Dee Covington gives a strong, credible performance, most touchingly in Empty’s interactions with Gus. Karen Slack has winning moments of near slapstick as Maeve, Empty’s pregnant partner.
Son “Pill,” short for PierLuigi or P.L., aims to identify with his dad. Pill is a homosexual with a husband and a rent boy on the side but the character’s motivations are unclear. What defines him beyond his hookups? Played by Matthew Schneck with gusto but a distracting accent, Pill is an engaging but unknowable character. The triangle of Pill, husband Paul (Kirkaldy Myers), and Eli (Luke Sorge) is the least dramatically effective of the lot.
Son V, for Vin, Vinnie, Vic or Vito (Justin Walvoord) has embraced the idea of hard manual labor in place of highbrow dissertations or Latin translations. He and wife Sooze Moon (Desiree See Jung) seem to have a knack for avoiding the unanswerables and simply getting on with life.
Emily Paton Davies is credible, and employs some of the best accents, but shows up only briefly as Gus’ friend Michelle.
So, is it good? “Nothing’s a single thing,” as Clio says. “It’s dialectical.”
Dialectics count for more than character development in Kushner’s hands.
Kushner plays with the idea of “watching” versus “acting,” and offers sometimes pedantic history lessons amid the infighting. (Kushner fanatics can research the real-life Vito Marcantonio, a congressman from East Harlem in the 1930s50s. Or not.)
The cast mostly does well with the difficult material. The famously wordy playwright delivers deep explorations of important topics, plus several funny bits and some political zings in the midst of an exhausting exercise in dissonance.
Director Chip Walton and Curious Theatre Company are rightly excited to have landed the rights to produce Kushner’s work, the centerpiece of its 20th season and a bookend to the company’s 1997 launch with Kushner’s “Angels in America.” But the audience’s excitement isn’t necessarily rewarded.
You see, it’s dialectical.