Angela DiMarco as Sylvia, Andre Nelson as Philip, and Trevor Young Marston as Oliver in a 2016 production at Theatre 22 in Seattle.
Photo credit: MR Toomey Photography
What is it?
It’s a play by British playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell, originally produced in London in 2008.
What’s it about?
The action takes place in two time periods, with the same actors playing the three principal roles in each period. In the 1958 story, Sylvia and Philip are seemingly happily married until Sylvia, an artist, introduces Philip to Oliver, the children’s author whose book she is illustrating. The two men fall in love, and Philip struggles to accept the same-sex attraction. In 2008, Philip and Oliver (same names, but not the same people as in the 1958 story) are a couple who have just split up because Philip cannot handle Oliver’s addiction to anonymous sex. Sybil, their straight friend, tries to help them get back together by making Oliver realize how unhealthy his lifestyle is.
That’s a lot of plot. What’s the point of having two storylines? Each one sounds enough for an engaging play.
Putting the two stories side by side illustrates how much life has changed for gay men in the intervening fifty years, but also how much things don’t change. Philip in 1958 and Oliver in 2008 both exhibit a lot of internalized homophobia and self-loathing. 1958 Philip feels ashamed of his same-sex attraction and tries to cure himself of it, while 2008 Oliver lives in a society where having tons of sex is celebrated (there’s a wonderful scene in 2008 where Oliver is being hired to write a story for a men’s magazine saying that gay men have got it right by engaging in huge quantities of mindless sex), but his mental health is not that much better than 1958 Philip’s. And in both stories, it’s a straight woman who helps the gay men accept themselves.
How nice—a thoroughly gay play!
And quite an unusual one. The author is very thoughtful, placing men’s attraction to one another in a larger, metaphysical context of the human search for meaning. That’s quite unusual in gay theatre!
Unusual in a good way?
Very good. I’m giving this two stars. A very fine, intelligent, funny, moving, thought-provoking examination of gay love, sex, longing, and loneliness.
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