By Jonathan Abarbanel
This year in Chicago theater offered a number of productions geared to LGBT themes or issues, as it always does. Some were standard-issue or special-purpose (such as the annual Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer, still running through Dec. 30 at Mary's Attic), but others were of above-average interest as mainstream theater as well as for our communities.
Perhaps the most outrageous work of the year was the world premiere of Thomas Bradshaw's Mary at the Goodman Theatre last February. Intentionally politically incorrect, Thomas's satire takes on late-20th-century U.S. racial history in both Black-on-white and Black-on-Black terms, and also issues of gay acceptance. As Bradshaw is gay and African-American, it was natural for him (but brave nonetheless) to combine both themes. Guaranteed to provoke all and completely please none, Mary did what theater is supposed to do: make people react, talk and—hopefully—think.
In March, Court Theatre offered Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, an amazingly imaginative picaresque journey into gender identity. Woolf's novel not only spans 300 years and several continents, but also has the sexually prolific title character (who barely ages through the 300 years) wake up one morning to find that he has become a woman. As adapted by Ruhl and staged by Jessica Thebus, only five actors were employed to portray characters of all ages and genders in a wonderfully visual and physical production. Woolf herself was bisexual (and famously so), and Orlando partly is based on the life and personality of Woolf's lover, Vita Sackville-West.
Ruhl also provided an original play, In the Next Room or, The Vibrator Play, which had its regional premiere at Victory Gardens Theater. It deals with a woman's right to expect—and demand—sexual fulfillment, if not from her husband, then from whomever/whatever is available. The delightfully creative aspect of the play is that Ruhl made it a comedy and smartly set it in the 1880s, when much about the female orgasm still wasn't understood. In so doing, she wrote the comedy Henrik Ibsen never managed to pen, in which the women are two steps ahead of the complacent and small-minded men.
As one might expect, About Face Theatre provided LGBT-theater fodder, with its two most successful works of the year being Philip Dawkins' The Homosexuals in June and Sarah Gubbins' The Kid Thing in September (in collaboration with Chicago Dramatists). Both were world premieres by Chicago-based writers, which is a good thing. Moving backwards through the last decade, The Homosexuals offers a series of episodes in the life and sexual history of Evan, the episodes tied together by Evan's overlapping circle of friends who also overlap as lovers. Perhaps longer on style than substance, the work was a witty look at a cross-section of urban gay types in the early 21st century. With The Kid Thing, Gubbins honed in on lesbian types (some might say stereotypes) and the issues raised when female couples decide to parent. Her real theme wasn't so much the kid thing, really, but conflicts between, and acceptance of, various lesbian role models.
There were, of course, many other productions that were LGBT in some aspect or other. For example, Court Theatre staged Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, in which a young man's gayness is but one issue of many, and Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook Terrace offered Monty Python's Spamalot, with its gay Lancelot and a prince who'd rather be a princess. Also, Project 891 Theatre Company presented Joe Orton's early success (well, he didn't live long enough to have a late success) Entertaining Mr. Sloane, in which a brother and sister vie for the attentions of a rough-trade young man. Caryl Churchill's genderfuck Cloud 9 showed up, too, as staged by the Gift Theatre in Jefferson Park. Employing both cross-gender and cross-racial casting, this well-known play takes on both male and female gender roles and social expectations in the Victorian Era and in the 1970's.
This list and "best-of" picks is far from comprehensive, but gives a rough indication of a continuing strong LGBT thematic presence in Chicago theater, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
