Reviews

PETER CRAWLEYreviews a selection of plays from the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

Dublin Gay Theatre Festival:

The Bird Sanctuary/Two Boys in a Bed

Project/Smock Alley

What is it to be "other"? That's the exploration within Frank McGuinness's The Bird Sanctuary, first staged in 1994, barely a year after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland, one that revels in the tension of opposition: between Irish and English, men and women, gay and straight, earthbound and otherworldly.

The play itself is tremendously subversive. The Booterstown pile of the Henryson family is reminiscent of any Big House of the Protestant Ascendancy. Some of the comic dialogue could have been bequeathed by Noël Coward. The squabbling over inheritance, money and property is distinctly Irish. The histrionic tragedy of highly-strung women and tormented sexual identities is straight out of Lorca. The metaphors are Ibsenite. The woman-scorned themes and sorcery-enabled revenge plots belong to Medea.

“We were the witches of Booterstown,” Clare Kissane’s Eleanor proudly announces. “Welcome back to the coven.”

Just what kind of a play is this? A naturalistic family tragedy or supernatural comedy? Or does its blend and blur of traditions mark an undiscovered genre, a dramatic form that dare not speak its name? The London-based Actors Circle struggles to find a tone to contain such a stimulating, dizzying piece, pitching almost every performance so high that it seems to be competing with, not calming or complementing, the play. This is why it’s Fiona Cuskelly, as the tightly repressed mother, Tina, who offers the standout performance. While the sorceresses around her are whirling and laughing, clasping hands and slapping each other silly, Cuskelly finds real magic in stillness within a play worth revisiting nonetheless.

To the innocent programme browser, the New York production of Two Boys In a Bed (on a Cold Winter's Night)seems to have only one thing on its mind. If the title and buck-naked poster image aren't clues, the marketing leaves less to the imagination: "It's a special treat to see handsome actors play their roles in the buff." Furthermore, one of these handsome actors is Spencer Keasey, aka Spencer Quest, a gay porn star.

This might be the most misleadingly advertised production since Waiting For Godotfound itself billed as "the laughter sensation of two continents". Generating erotic expectations that the production doesn't seek to fulfil, it also discourages a broader audience that really ought to see the show. Intelligent, moving and superbly performed, James Edwin Parker's play is in the tradition of Terrence McNally, tracing the obstacles to communication, intimacy and love in 1980s Manhattan, sensitively realised by director David Drake.

Sex may sell, but Scott Douglas Cunningham and Keasey prove that honesty lingers much longer. Anyone who bought a ticket in the hope of a repeat performance from the star of Manplay 18won't get quite what they bargained for, but one thing is for sure: they'll never look at a gay porn star the same way again.

Both shows run until tomorrow