The
script of The Pride
by Alexi Kaye Campbell—his debut play—has been
imported from London’s West
End by off-Broadway’s MCC Theatre at
the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and
the cast are all Brits, but they’re not the Royal Court originals and the production is new,
direction by
American Joe Mantello.
(For the
thumbnail synopsis, in the following italics, I’ve borrowed a few key
sentences
from a wonderfully deft thumbnail description I found in David
Benedict’s Variety review
of
the UK debut, though in plain text I’ve interpolated the US cast names
and
adjusted for differences in the productions.)
Well-heeled,
confident '50s Philip (Hugh
Dancy)
is married to Sylvia (Andrea
Riseborough),
who is illustrating a children's book by Oliver (Ben Whishaw). In [the]
opening scene—all brittle
chat in cut-glass accents—the witty banter of their initial meeting is
gradually undercut by unspoken tension that isn’t exactly dissipated by
Philip
saying, “As long as I don't discover you've been having a torrid affair
behind
my back, we should get on just fine.”
In
fact, as becomes clear in the electrifying gaze between the two men,
the
unspoken tension in the room isn't heterosexual.
The
action then jump-cuts to the present, where Philip and Oliver—re-imagined as contemporary figures, or
perhaps just
present-day characters poetically sharing the same names—still
in
their mid-30s—now live together. Their relationship, however, is
seriously jeopardized by Oliver's addiction to casual sex, a conundrum
more
worrying to their friend Sylvia than Oliver himself.
Although,
at first, the play's principal relationships appear to be between the
men,
Campbell is cunningly misleading the audience. Sylvia grows in
awareness and
power. She is the most generous, least self-deceiving character, and in
both
eras, she drives the men toward truth.
The
two eras cast light upon each other. The societal repression of the
'50s is
neatly paralleled with the self-repression of gay men in the 2000s.
I
cite Mr. Benedict’s review not only because of its, for me, time-saving
concision, but because his review is just so damned enthusiastic. It’s
hard to
know if anything was lost in the transition, because the cast of
authentic
Brits and Mantello’s direction seem to
be right in the zone: there doesn’t seem to be a disparity of tone or
an
inadvertent “Americanization” of rhythm. Yet I found my reaction to The
Pride
to be ultimately a cool one. Say
what
one will about Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (currently and coincidentally in revival
by the
Transport Group), there is about it, even 40 years after its debut, the
freshness of something breaking down a wall and making us look at a
subset of
society with enlightened eyes, of taking us to a place we haven’t been
before.
And
while I certainly understand the passion that makes a writer explore
the kinds
of concepts that inform The Pride, I
found that the scenes set in the 50s to be preaching to the converted,
and the
contemporary scenes to form, well, dare I say it, just another play
about gay
relationships in New York City—with the recurring themes overwritten
and
hammered home a bit much in each era.
Ironically
the parts of the play that made me sit up alert and clock something a
bit new
and bracing, involved the fourth actor, Adam James, who plays three supporting roles:
first—in
the present day—an actor that new millennium Oliver has hired for
sexual
role-playing games; then a straight magazine editor who at first seems
a boor,
hoping to cash in on the gay bandwagon, but whose waters run deeper
than we’d
think; and in the past, somewhat chillingly, a psychiatrist whose
specialty is
aversion therapy. Small scenes, but here are the places where the
playwright
Mr. Campbell soars and scores.
Small
victories…but telling ones too, and not its not so bad for a first play
to have
three bold, brilliant strokes punctuating competent dramaturgy and
uniquely
theatrical conception. It’s enough to make me curious about what Mr.
Campbell
may come up with next.