Out in the Arts

by D.L. Groover

• DOROTHY GOES TO THE MOVIES

Dorothy Arzner wasn’t the first woman movie director (there were surprisingly many during filmdom’s pioneer days). But she was the only one during Hollywood’s “golden age” to breach the studio walls and become “one of the boys.” That she was a flaming bull dyke in tailored suits and ties, with close-cropped hair, who lived for 40 years with choreographer Marion Morgan, ratchets up our curiosity and celebration.

When Hollywood formed itself into an “industry” in the late ’20s, women were excluded from the club. They could author screenplays, edit the men’s celluloid, or slave away as seamstresses in the studio’s wardrobe department, but they could not direct. Arzner entered through editing, and her invaluable work convinced Paramount that in order to keep her, they better make her happy and give her what she wanted. Between 1927 and 1943, Arzner directed 17 features. Almost all have unconventional heroines, strong and self-sufficient, who must reconcile marriage and career. Like James Whale’s movies, her films resonate with gay subtexts, and this mini-retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is the perfect representation for Pride month’s Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 713/639-7300

Working Girls (1931), June 1, 5 pm

Anybody’s Woman (1930), June 13, 7 pm

Honor Among Lovers (1931), June 13, 8:30 pm

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), June 14, 7 pm • HALLELUJAH

I’m a sucker for historical plays, so when I learned that the AD Players was presenting a work about George Frederick Handel and the writing of his oratorio The Messiah, I had to see it. Now, I know, this troupe with their mission statement of Christian theater ministry might be a turnoff for you pagans out there, but sometimes you’ve just got to have a little faith.

Tim Slover’s Joyful Noise (through June 8) is a splendidly realized surprise. Thoroughly entertaining, wickedly clever, and brought to life with imaginative design by Troy McLaughlin and Lee Walker, and sumptuous costuming from Donna Southern, the play documents Handel’s adversities in getting one of civilization’s greatest accomplishments on the stage. Not the writing of it—the producing of it. Handel, you see, never had trouble filling a blank manuscript page. Prolific and ready with a tune for any occasion, if he couldn’t come up with one, he borrowed someone else’s.

Handel was music’s first impresario. A businessman as well as musician, he arrived in London from Germany in 1710 during the boom times of Italian opera and gave them better than they knew. He managed his own theater and became the world’s most famous composer. His fortunes ebbed and flowed. He grew fatter in London, becoming an English citizen, and his music defines the Georgian period.

One of the most fascinating personal details of GFH’s life is that he never married and left scant clues about his private life. His biographers (when they deign mention such a topic) have never satisfactorily answered the perplexing question about his sex life. We can only surmise about the “sweet Saxon.” Slover’s play doesn’t go there, but this tantalizing speculation is hardly missed with all the other wrangling and drama going on backstage and at the court of the other German George in London at the time, George II.

Unlike Handel’s glorious music, the play is slightly windy and could stand some judicious use of the red pencil, especially in those stretches involving the whining Susanna Cibber. This most prodigiously talented of English actress/singers was never the misguided, maligned waif she appears here.

The cast, though, is splendid. Marion Arthur Kirby captures the expansive boisterousness of England’s greatest import in both the physical and spirit. Courtney Blythe has a field day as low-brow high-soaring soprano Kitty Clive. And Ric Hodgin is sardonic royal wit to perfection.

AD Players, 713/526-2721 • AND KEEP IN MIND

Alice in Wonderland

June 5–15

Houston Ballet

Wortham Theatre Center, 713/227-ARTS

Ben Stevenson’s version of the Lewis Carroll classic has the Houston Ballet talking as well as dancing. This production is Stevenson’s swan song. He departs July 1 for Dallas/Fort Worth Ballet (to be renamed Texas Dance Theatre) to become that company’s artistic director. A gala farewell tribute to his 27-year directorship takes place at the Wortham on June 15.

Hamlet

Through June 22

Alley Theatre, 713/228-8421

Arguably the world’s greatest play, Shakespeare’s tragedy is grand enough to withstand anything. Olivier overlaid the great Dane with Freud; Gielgud gave him intellect; Barrymore, a matinee idol’s sexiness; Burton, a menacing intensity; and, game girl that she was, Judith Anderson never did look good in tights. Alley Theatre resident hunk Ty Mayberry assays the eponymous hero. He is the right age for Elsinore’s prince, but will he go Nordic blond (like Olivier) or keep his intense brooding darkness? We look forward to what director Greg Boyd has in store for the dysfunctional royals.

Jerker

Through July 5 (at least)

Theatre New West…too, 713/522-2204

Nudity. Sex. Masturbation. Need we say more? Playwright/composer Robert Chesley wrote his two-character drama in response to the AIDS epidemic in 1986, and it has all the physicality and wonton abandon as his other sexy works for the theater. More flesh is on view, but a lot more heart, too, in this sentimental paean to anonymous gay phone sex and the phantoms of sexual freedom. Brett Cullum and Glen Fillmore heat up Ma Bell and then some.

If you have any comments about this article, please email them to letters@outsmartmagazine.com.