Baltimore City Paper
Gay Old Time
Rudnick's Revolutionary AIDS Comedy Shows its Age
Review By Brennen Jensen
What a difference a decade makes. Written in 1992 and debuting the following year to acclaim and an Obie, Jeffrey was a cathartic comedic blast; a funny, frisky slapstick play concerning AIDS; a sparkling dramatic gem that celebrated gayness at a time when the disco ball saw its darkest hours.
Today, as we lurch into the first years of the 21st century, AIDS is still with us. But the disease has been subject to myriad more nuanced and substantive artistic treatments--Tony Kushner's sweeping Angels in America, to take one stage example. (And one the AXIS Theatre produced so pluckily a few years back.) Meanwhile, homosexual humor has bid adieu to the off-Broadway boards to nestle snugly on the family-room sofa--prime-time TV shows such as Will and Grace broadcast gay cross-talk across the country to high ratings and mainstream acceptance. All of which leaves Jeffrey, currently on AXIS' stage under the direction of veteran local director Terry Long, a little long in the tooth. Material that was once catharsis--show-tune worship, Liza Minnelli jokes, butt-groping priests--comes across increasingly as cliché.
The action revolves around randy, bed-hopping Jeffrey (Jonas David Grey), a resident of Manhattan's gay demimonde who decides he must give up getting it on: What was once a delight is now potentially deadly. As written, the play's opening briskly shows us the sack-time scenarios young Jeff faces--from partners who just want to cuddle while crying for Mommy to those who hit the sheets wrapped in more cellophane than a Hostess Twinkie. Long updates these sexual shenanigans by having them transpire via cybersex, a clever twist that is nonetheless problematic, seeing as the play is set in an unwired 1993.
Wobbly celibate Jeffrey soon meets hunky Steve (Oscar Ceville) at the gym. Jeffrey's bench-press partner is a dreamboat, but one who happens to be HIV+. Torn between desire and emotional and physical self-preservation, Jeffrey seeks consul with older friend Sterling, a sort of nelly Noel Coward (played with haughty humor by Robert Neal Marshall) who's partnered with cutie-pie perennial Cats dancer Darius (an appropriately prancy Anthony Viglione). Through sundry whirlwind scenes, Jeffrey learns you can hate AIDS and still embrace life and love. Undercutting the message somewhat is the superficial nature of the relationships. How do you reconcile the tragic coda between Sterling and Darius when the former has earlier dismissed his young, dimwitted lover as "a boyfriend, not a person." And the tortured Jeffrey-Steve affair seems entirely based on a single lusty encounter.
Less than fresh though Jeffrey might be, one would have to be a stone-cold homophobe--or perhaps stone-cold dead--not to titter at some of playwright Paul Rudnick's zingers. While not all the ensemble is up to the turn-on-a-dime timing the material requires, there are some bright spots. Take Jeffrey's fantasy phone call with his Wisconsin parents, who proceed to debate the merits of Jeffrey Stryker's The Young and the Hung porno video. This over-the-top scene includes his mother (Mary Anne Walsh), with full Badger State twang in effect, asking of her son, "Sweetheart . . . are you a top or a bottom?" Walsh's other show-stopping depictions include a tippling society dame staging a "Hoedown for AIDS" benefit (and one whose tongue gets ever more booze-thickened each time she addresses the crowd) and a glossy New Age guru who is so creepily convincing that she could probably get her own cable show. And production choreographer Andrew Carter has a flair for creating rousing dance numbers in tight confines, be it a rowdy square dance or a playfully sloppily reference to Riverdance.
If you haven't met Jeffrey yet, AXIS' production is an adequate introduction. But for the rest of us, it has come down to a case of "been there, done that."
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