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Doric Wilson's Forever After is a cagey, theatrical
Chinese puzzle masquerading as a mere trinket -- one of the
oldest and best comic poses. Two handsome young men in
identical flannel shirts and denims celebrating their first
anniversary together languish before the fireplace and review
their romance; or, rather, two actors rehearse a play about
this gay romance on Robert deMora's witty set -- a two-piece,
fake-perspective model of a tasteful downtown apartment. But
when a happy ending threatens, two drag queens representing
Comedy and Tragedy -- who have been perched inside the
proscenium arch making periodic rude remarks -- descend to
redirect the actors in their own versions of the story. It's
as if Charles Ludlam were trying out the cast of Scrambled
Feet in a pastiche of Ben Johnson and Doric Wilson's A
Perfect Relationship when Pirandello walked in.
The various elements ultimately get tied together as tidily as
the topics on one of John Leonard's "Private Lives"
columns, with plenty of in-jokes, out-takes, and assaults on
the fourth wall along the way. But these stagy shenanigans
have a purpose: Wilson is questioning the possibility of true
love in the modern world -- a subject so potentially corny
(and so pressing) that it can only be tackled with
self-consciousness and a sense of humor.
It's not a subject of exclusive interest to gays, either. In
fact, as more heterosexuals are postponing or deciding against
marriage and childbearing, they are taking lessons from
homosexuals on how to settle the sexual bargaining and
emotional negotiation that goes on between two independent
singles. That gays may have been writing their own contracts
longer doesn't, of course, make them experts; in the field of
love, perhaps there are no experts. But gay men's
ritualization of classic romantic conflicts -- desire and
defensiveness, innocence and cynicism, commitment and
detachment -- provides ample material for Wilson, a gay
playwright and man of the theater whose shrewdness at social
observation Moliere might have admired.
"Bob is so butch," Forever After's Tom
remarks of a dinner guest, "he can hardly eat in
public." Much of the play's discussion revolves around
image, looks, style, media and their influence on modern-day
romanticism. Tom and David are Christopher Street clones for
whom masculinity is all; they worry whether putting coffee
beans in their after-dinner Sambucca -- or drinking Sambucca
at all -- will destroy their studiedly casual urban-cowboy
image. And their reenactment of their first meeting at the
Ramrod is a funny, deadly accurate study of the curiously
unromantic gay-macho courting routine.
The drag queens supply an interesting and multilevel contrast.
They are, at once, an affront to the butch-idolatry of the gay
male subculture, a blast from the past (literally "fairy
godmothers," representing all the campy queens and
loveless clowns you ever saw as symbols of gay life in the
media), and a self-conscious playwright' device to indicate
his own ambivalence about both the possibility of romance and
the depiction of same on the stage.
While Melpomene and Thalia (the tragic muse and the comic muse
of Greek mythology, played by semi-famous drag-comedians Casey
Wayne and Bill Blackwell) do play good angel/bad angel in
rewriting the script of Tom and David's love affair, they're
also an excuse for the author to telegraph the history and
politics of gay theater by dishing Martin Sherman's play Bent
("Too bad we don't have an electric fence!"), Robert
Patrick's T-Shirts, the theater in general ("Give
an audience what they don't want -- they'll respect you for
it!"), and himself. Some of this is terribly insy -- you
have to be aware of Wilson's leather allegiance to know what a
scream it is to call him "the Florence Foster Jenkins of
physical culture" -- but most of it is hilarious, and it
introduces an element of sheer fun to this combination love
story, political rap, drag show, and backstage farce.
Underneath all the topical references and hallmarks of gay
humor. Wilson is a classicist at heart, and it shows in his
noticeably literate and well-crafted writing, and perhaps also
in his overwriting. When Melpomene's rhetorical diatribes go
on too long or young Tom lapses into a soap-operatic monologue
about his unhappy childhood, Wilson knows enough to have
another character point out how boring they are. But I think
the speeches should be trimmed in the first place. And I'm a
little surprised that Wilson didn't do more with Thalia, who
spends most of the time reconciling the lovers rather than
fleshing out the notion of Comedy and what it brings to love
and life, gays and plays.
You may never notice how underwritten the part is, though,
because it's played by Bill Blackwell, one of the last
remaining "stars" of Off-Off-Broadway. Dressed in a
panic of flaming orange and rhinestones (Robert deMora's gowns
are as purposely tacky as his set is elegant). Blackwell takes
command with character, not camping; unlike many drag
performers, including the more exaggerated Casey Wayne, he
projects good sense and self-respect, and his comic timing and
amazing androgyny make him as magical a stage creation as
Peter Pan or Ludlam's Camille.
The weight of the play is, however, well-distributed among the
actors. Anthony Errinson as Tom and Hunt Block as David -- who
interrupt the show to announce that they are straight
("All actors in gay plays are -- another time-honored
theatrical convention!") -- do a particularly good job
distinguishing themselves while playing similar
"types." Tom is the one who whines, "You refuse
to take my negativity seriously," and David is the one
who boasts, "I came out post-Stonewall, so I have no
experience with sex in bed." Wilson (who also directed,
with impressive economy) doesn't say whether their fictional
relationship will last, but the play is such a cleverly
imagined staging of an idea that it may well live in the
theater forever after.
Soho News, May 28, 1980.
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