Out in the Arts

by D.L. Groover

BRAVOS FOR BUTLER AND BULLITT

Run, don’t walk, to Theatre New West to see the most compelling show now playing in town. Dan Butler’s The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me is theater at its best.

Ever since Mart Crowley’s revolutionary 1968 Boys in the Band wove GLBT culture and issues squarely into the social fabric, a whole sub-genre in drama has arisen. This is the “gay play,” and it has as many facets as our community flies rainbow flags. It can be caustic and inflammatory (Larry Kramer), winsome and sentimental (Terrence McNally), intellectual and windy (Tony Kushner), cute and cuddly (Harvey Fierstein). It can masquerade as straight (Tennessee Williams), bizarre and psychotic (Harry Kondoleon), or gayer than gay (Robert Chesley). The Only Thing has all the positives—wit, charm, intellect, power—and none of the negatives —pomp, cynicism, depression. And it’s all gay: a romp through phases of many lives that affirms, needles, enlivens, and makes you think.

Best known for playing the ultra-hetero, skirt-chasing sports DJ Bulldog on Fraser, Butler wrote his one-man show to return to his first love, live theater, and to exercise his drama muscles, which he realized would soon atrophy on a TV sitcom. The play was a huge success off-Broadway and in various incarnations in regional theaters across the country. At the same time, his one-man show also marked Butler’s public coming out.

The play is a beauty: a gay panorama of 14 characters whose incisive vignettes cover a wide swath of our community:

• a swishy opera queen who is “appalled, insulted, and pissed” that his best friend thinks he acts flamboyantly gay

• a straight barfly who’s more upset that his friend who has just come out to him might not find him suitably attractive

• a discriminating ACT-Up crazy who doesn’t want to share “our disease” with “blacks, Hispanics, or dykes”

• a shallow Chelsea clone who boasts of his recent bedding of a gorgeous gymnast but ponders if he should ask the sleeping beauty next to him for a second date

• a snooty cynic who lectures us on the inappropriateness of our rainbow flag and AIDS quilt to embody our strength and masculinity

• a pre-adolescent Dan whose wrestling matches with buddy Tommy give him a tantalizing taste of what lies ahead

• a Mardi Gras mask-wearing Pan who cheerleads us through the best and brightest of our GLBT heritage.

These playlets, some no longer than an insightful paragraph, channel aspects of Butler himself into a vivid multi-faceted mosaic that includes all of us. It’s this universal humanity so apparent in Butler’s work that raises his play to the next level.

In a word, actor Steve Bullitt (pictured) is superb in Butler’s tour de force. Graced with effortless charm and quiet masculinity, when needed, he generates a powerful electricity that crackles through all Butler’s characters and lights them up like a Pride float. There’s not a false note in the lot. Directed with sure craft by Joe Watts, Bullitt bounds onto the stage and commands our attention. Inhabiting these diverse scenes to perfection, he brings these people to amazing life. I urge you to see Bullitt’s magical, truthful performance in Butler’s magical, truthful play.

RECOMMENDED OUTINGS

• Always, Patsy Cline

Through September 28

Stages Repertory Theatre

Ted Swindley’s two-women musical, premiered by Stages in 1988, is a country-fried homage to the great singer through her friendship with a Houston groupie. “Sing, laugh, and cry”—just like in the 27 songs peppered throughout.

• The Graduate

September 23–October 5

Hobby Center

“Plastics, Benjamin, plastics!” Mike Nichols’ hit movie. Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. Simon and Garfunkle’s soundtrack. Dustin Hoffman’s star-making turn. Now, all this has been turned into one big bad Broadway show. In case you’ve missed her sterling performances in Bejeweled and Princess Caraboo, Jerry Hall, super model and the former Mrs. Jagger, plays the adulterous Mrs. Robinson.

D.L. Groover writes monthly on arts for OutSmart.

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