Fag Puddle with Crown and Wire by Salman Toor (2022)
Don't you love it when edgy theater blows your mind? And not just because of some sexual staging truly worth whatever bite an intimacy coordinator's salary took out of the limited budget of an off-Broadway play: Prince Faggot breaks the fourth wall with greater resonance than I've ever felt previously.
This "gay fantasia" for the New Millennium ranks right up there with A Strange Loopand Slave Play. It grabbed me by the throat from the get-go when an extraordinarily charismatic actor (Mirhir Kumar) projects a photo of himself as a child whom he identifies as incontrovertibly queer prior to having any awareness of what that actually means. Several of the other performers (who are identified only by number in the Playbill, and not just because most of them play multiple roles announced by the cast early on) follow suit before Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill provocatively shows his hand with a projection of Prince George that appeared in Vogue, People and other publications.
Tannahill does, brilliantly, but we are way beyond closets in Prince Faggot. In the scene that follows, set in the near future, Prince George informs his parents that he'll be bringing his brown boyfriend home from Oxford for the weekend. Dev, played by Kumar, tries to make a good impression by giving the nonplussed Kate and William a first edition of The Waves as a house gift, a gesture soon interrupted by the emergency dispatch of the hilarious palace flack who reports that a picture of the couple holding hands has surfaced on the internet that very morning. The Firm swings into action and Dev suddenly discovers he's in over his head, although George remains blasé. He never has known anything different, given Fleet Street's longstanding obsession with the royal family.
We quickly discover what the men are "into" in a scene that literally throws back the curtain on gay sex, the first of several as necessary as they are explicit for juxtaposing the gulf between public and private behavior, one that has narrowed considerably in the age of camera phones. Much later, an indiscreet George, fearlessly embodied by John McCrea, whines to Charlotte, the Princess of Wales, that he's the only gay man who's ever been forced to discuss chem sex with his grandfather, in this case the ancient but still breathing King Charles III. It's followed by a drug-induced hallucination in which a quartet of former English kings and queens remind George that you can indulge your appetites so long as they're cloaked in the hypocrisy of marrying a "nice" white gay man whom you don't necessarily love. History intervenes more soberly with the mind of Dev, a versatile queer theorist of sorts, who confesses he could never "bottom" for George because it would betray the millions of south Asians who were fucked by colonial Britain for centuries.
Go for bitchy, brilliant comedy, but stay for Prince Faggot''s nuanced exploration of how our age and station in life influence the expression of out identities in bed and out. Obviously, this can have awful consequences as we have just seen for nearly two thrilling hours, but Tannahill gives incandescent N'Yomi Allure Stewart, who plays Charlotte ever-so-quietly, the final word. It's absolutely TRANScendent, although that's not to take anything away from the equally moving break-the fourth-wall speeches delivered by Rachel Crowl, K. Todd Freeman and David Greenspan.
I sailed out of the theater pitying the prince and embracing my inner queen who had absolutely no idea what awaited him off the hobby horse.
I have the same problem with Just In Time as I do with the CD of Bobby Darin's greatest hits that I bought during one of my early summers in the Pines: there are only a few songs I really want to hear, including "Mack The Knife," one of the first 45 rpm singles that my parents bought me after the Bronx crooner sang it on the hair-tousling Ed Sullivan Show in 1959, when I was five. The recording falls early enough in Darin's career that it's performed before intermission, as is "Beyond The Sea," my other listen-on-repeat, then a fairly new innovation.
That said, nearly everything else about the production, rises to the occasion of Jonathan Groff's finger-snapping, hip shaking, time-stopping inhabitation (think Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz, a superior show), minus what likely was Darin's toxic masculinity. Not that there's anything wrong with that in this flashback context: you might be a little toxic yourself if you were told you'd be dead at 16, the match that lights the nonpareil nightclub performer's relentless, all-consuming drive to conquer show business in nearly all its forms. I'd forgotten that Darin had been nominated for an Oscar in Captain Newman, MD, a 1963 movie I plan to watch again on You Tube.
The Circle in the Square has been believably transformed into the Copacabana, the venue where Darin belatedly found his happy place before finally kicking the bucket at age 37, successfully recovering from a brief foray into attempted folk music relevance which does yield the oh-so-poignant "If I Were A Carpenter," sung to ex-wife Sandra Dee (!); Alex Timbers' reliably imaginative staging makes full use of theater-in-the-round and cleverly overcomes many of the jukebox musical's hoariest cliches, especially during "Splish Splash," where Groff once again proves he can do anything, including look smokin' hot in a Speedo; the kaleidoscopically colorful Fifties and Sixties costumes; and the supporting performances--including the Sirens, whose fluid, if often soaked, choreography appears to have been inspired by the original production of Dreamgirls--all have the ring of backstage truth.
And during the book's slower "and then" moments, especially in the first act, I had plenty of time to fantasize about the uses I could make of my "Mack The Knife" single. Should I wait outside and ask Groff to autograph it? Or, since I'm in the de-accessioning stage of my life anyway, should I mail with a handwritten note informing him that our brief bicycle encounter last spring on Fifth Avenue tops the list of my lifetime celebrity encounters?
Yep, I'm a major Groff stan (you would be, too, if you re-watched HBO's incomparable Looking as recently as I have and paid top dollar to see Merrily We Roll Along), even more obsessed than my mother was with Darin. And, believe it or not, it being able to confirm my memory that she caught his performance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in August 1960 after we visited Disneyland would give me almost as much joy.
Thom and I found a stowaway from Alligator Alcatraz in Delia's trunk en route to Quechee to celebrate Independence Day.
Actually, that's fake news. My stepmother had it custom-made in Juarez after I casually mentioned how cool a piñata that looked like the Lacoste logo (which the French company identifies as a crocodile) would be. In just a day, a couple of Vermont thunderstorms washed away four decades of dust it had accumulated lying-in-wait on top of a pair of bookcases at 47 Pianos.
Thom and I arrived the night before Magda, Joe and D-Kids. Without paying much attention to the weather forecast, we went on a walking tour of Quechee first-thing Thursday morning. Ya gotta love a small-town library.
The Quechee Church is open to all Christian denominations.
For a state as white as Vermont, it takes Black history pretty seriously.
One of Vermont's hundred covered bridges crosses it.
Look what happened when the river rose eleven feet during Hurricane Irene. A sudden thunderstorm forced Thom and I to take refuge in the basement of a Simon Pearce glassblowing factory, powered by the rapids outside. Quechee's hot air balloon festival had taken place two weeks earlier.
Employees craft expensive glassware sold in the show room upstairs. When Joe rescued us, he self-purchased his birthday and Father's Day gift from Magda: a pair of whiskey glasses for $90 each. It was news to her!
Wooden blowpipes and other tools comprise a striking, three-dimensional collage hanging in the visitor's area.
After high winds and thunderstorms closed the pool at the Quechee Club, we dined at a pizzeria in Bridgewater which also included an arcade. Della and Dagny proved to be equally adept at shaking down cash contributions and scooping up rubber duckies.
They even spent a little of their allowances unsuccessfully trying to win plush toys.
Meanwhile, Thom and Desi continues an unexpected bromance that had started at the pool.
On a Friday morning hike, Della demanded to know where the dinosaur tracks were.
A seesaw hidden in the woods and a pretty fast merry-go-road at Lake Pinneo later that afternoon enabled the D-Kids to burn off some energy. Magda and Joe subscribe to what I call the shark school of parenting: keep them moving at all times.
Dagny's fashion sense definitely doesn't include camouflage.
Desi, like Thom, can nap anywhere.
It turned out the still sodden piñata lacked a plug so it remained forever-unfilled with candy. That absence didn't diminish the D-Girls's bloodlust. Joe, Magda and I got several whacks in as well. Newspapers inside were dated 1987, a year after Magda was born which raises the question: why didn't I give it to her or Zoltan when they were young children? Because it was a crucial element of my apartment's decor which Audrey once accurately described as "late-college." The de-accessioning era continues, here literally in full swing!
Thom presented the kids their new outfits afterward. Too bad Dagny didn't embrace the Parisian look. It really suits her.
I brought the D-Girls personalized key chains in Williamsburg when my friends from Colorado visited the week before. They include tiny states of Vermont (Massachusetts was out of stock) and peace signs as well as unicorns, the first letters of their names, lips and an eye.
All the D-Kids got a ride in Delia. Dagny and Della quickly mastered turning up the music volume to accelerate the car, and Desi looked truly awestruck when Thom put the top up. Just call us the fun uncles.
I had to fend off an attack from a piñata basher before our departure Saturday morning. Fortunately, the inflatable Pittsburgh Pirates bat couldn't do much damage. Wherever did I pick that up? From the secret drawer, of course! Soon to become the portable secret drawer since it's unlikely the D-Kids will ever visit 47 Pianos.
On our way back to New York, we stopped for a terrific seafood lunch in Niantic with Randy.
What an enjoyable four days! Thanks again, Magda & Joe.
I wish I could say that I revered David R. Slavitt for the books and poetry he published under his own name. Alas, I cannot. He was Henry Sutton to me.
When the Times published his obituary today, I immediately flashed back to my mother's living room bookshelves which stacked his two of his titles, The Exhibitionist and The Voyeur. Both were published by Bernard Geis and Associates, which shepherded Valley of the Dolls, to the best seller list, and may have been selections of the Literary Guild. Mary, who hid from me only Portnoy's Complaint(in her lingerie drawer!), belonged.
I read neither of Sutton's books in their entirety, only the dirty parts, which I'm pretty sure introduced me to the concept of blow jobs, in a heterosexual context. of course. Still, these passages were revelatory (you mean someone will let you put this there?!?!) and preceded my furtive paperback acquisition several years later of The Lord Won't Mind, the gay romance by Gordon Merrick (also a bestseller) that expanded my horizons to include vicarious anal sex.
But Slavitt's novels remain, at least in memory, a stunning artifact of a time when words were far more accessible than images for a sheltered 14-year-old suburbanite who knew where to look for them. Thank you, Henry!
When I think of Diane Arbus, celebrity portraits don't usually spring to mind. An exhaustive but poorly installed exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory changed that impression when many of the haunted faces, hung at various levels, looked familiar. Not that the curators made them easy to identify, although that may have been the point. Arbus turned some of her freaks into celebrities of a sort and vice versa.
"Diane Arbus: Constellation"
Two examples: who can forget these images?
Identical twins, Roselle, NJ (1967)
Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park (1962)
Eyes cropped from her photos gaze out unsettlingly from a large video screen near the entrance to the exhibit. All were looking directly at Arbus's camera and now, visitors are looking back at them, more than half a century later.
I had forgotten that Arbus worked as a commercial photographer for years before the Museum of Modern Art made her famous shortly after she committed suicide. Many of these portraits must have been magazine assignments. Somehow, her camera makes them kin.
Writers
A few years after Arbus took this photo, I encountered the blind author's Labyrinths(1962) on a syllabus for a course in modernist literature taught by George Stade, one of Columbia's most charismatic professors. The short stories bewildered me so much that I didn't even bother to retain the New Directions paperback, although I still have most of my other college texts.
Arbus photographed a pre-cancerous Sontag; her hair turned white after treatment, at which time she adopted her signature skunk look by dying all but a front streak black. Her only child, a year younger than I, became an intellectual in his own right.
Writer Susan Sontag with her son David in New York City (1970)
Hands down, this was the most surprising photo in the exhibit. Somehow, Arbus makes the Valley of the Dolls author (31 million copies sold!) look like one of the swinging singles who also posed just as unselfconsciously for her.
Norman Mailer always has been one of my favorite authors (The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song: case closed) but this manspreading portrait certainly exposes his toxic masculinity.
Norman Mailer at home in Brooklyn (1963)
You've got to wonder what both the photographer and the author thought they were trying to convey here, or maybe it's just a bad portrait. Even the uniquely talented Arbus is entitled to an occasional failure.
(OK, the term is a little passé but at least I included a guy!)
Has there ever been a better name for a burlesque performer? She was born Fannie Belle Fleming, a country girl from West Virginia. Paul Newman even starred in a movie about her and she lived to see it. Fleming''s beloved dog at the time died within hours of her in 2015.
Although Hollywood's hungriest publicity queen has what some women call "just been fucked" hair, she also projects a kind of girl-next-door quality rare for Arbus's subjects.
This hunky Italian poet from the Bronx was in the right place at the right time. His silkscreening experience (wink wink) landed him a job at the Factory early on where he starred in several of Andy Warhol's underground films and collaborated on more than 500 of the artist's Screen Tests.
I'm pretty sure I never had read a novel chattier or more than transgressive than Viva's Superstar, published in 1970. Gloria, her fictional ego goes from a wanna-be nun to making porn at the Factory, a trajectory fueled by gallons of speed.
Mae West in bed with her monkey, Santa Monica (1965)
Actresses
Does this look like a woman nominated twice for an Oscar (in Death of a Salesman and Baby Doll) or someone whose pet just died? She also was a founding member of the Actors Studio. Arbus had a thing for photographing older women in their furs.
Twenty years after this photo was taken, the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Claudette Colbert. A very gay neighbor took me to the truly glamorous gala where I brushed past the freezing sister on the left, then 71. Once one of the world's most famous people, she starred in Birth of a Nation, a landmark silent film directed by D.W. Griffith and released in 1915, a year before my mother was born! Facts like these only can be appreciated once you achieve a certain longevity of your own.
I recall my father, a World War II vet, contemptuously dismissing people like Maurice Chevalier and Tokyo Rose as collaborators. The truth about the latter, accused of broadcasting Japanese propaganda to American soldiers, is more complicated. Born Iva Toguri in Los Angeles, the Christian Girl Scout travelled to Tokyo before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor where she was stranded after the United States interned her parents, both immigrants, in a prison camp. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, under pressure from gossip columnist Walter Winchell and the American Legion, investigated her once she returned to the US, allegedly threatening witnesses if they didn't testify against her. Convicted on a single count of treason in 1949, Toguri was pardoned by President Gerald R. Ford eight years after Arbus took this photo. Somehow, the burden of history doesn't seem to weigh too heavily on this happy woman, who left the U.S. to care for a sick aunt, not to become infamous.
Thomas Hoving, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (1967)
It took only a glance to intuit these internationally renowed ballet dancers, a decade apart in age, were once lovers. For those in the know, she celebrated their relationship just as much as their talent.
Arbus did not often focus her lens on Black Americans but the exhibit includes two photos of the Godfather of Soul. His sweaty, funky essence appears to have eluded her.
James Brown backstage at the Apollo Theater, New York City (1966)
Tiptoe Through the Tulips anyone? Forty million Americans watched this peculiar musician, who played the ukulele and sang in a falsetto, marry Miss Vicki on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" a year after Arbus photographed him. He was 37, she just 17! BTW, Jimmy Fallon, the current "Tonight Show" host, averages 1.2 million viewers a night. RIP monoculture.
I like to think I went to MoMA for the very first time to see the ground-breaking Diane Arbus exhibit which opened during my sophomore year at Columbia. The Sunday New York Times, on sale weeks late at the PX in El Paso, had been my culture bible for years, so I'm pretty sure I would have been aware of the show despite the insularity of my campus life. In any case, I've been fascinated by the photographer for nearly all of my adult life, avidly reading Patricia Bosworth's 1984 biography. I won't deny that the "freakishness" of her subjects--which, in retrospect, seems a cruel characterization--formed the core of her initial appeal. But with the perspective of age, I realize it's Arbus's acute empathy that most distinguishes her work. No one can deny the humanity emanating from her stark black and white compositions.
Arbus was way ahead of the curve adding "I" to LGBTQ. "Go ahead, stare at me like everybody else does," this resigned subject seems to be saying. "At the end of my day, all I need is my dog and a cigarette."
Hermaphrodite and dog in a carnival trailer, Maryland (1970)
In the age of RuPaul's Drag Race, it's difficult to conceive how shocking these photos were when the vast majority of closet doors remained firmly shut. It's clear this guy knows he looks good and likely would say "what the fuck do you know?" to anyone who disagreed. His fierceness embodies the bravery demonstrated at Stonewall.
Somehow wanting to look like Marilyn
Transvestite with a picture of Marilyn Monroe, New York City (1967)
. . . seems a lot less pathetic than fanboying over Joan Crawford. Or maybe that's just my East Coast bias.
Joan Crawford fan, Los Angeles (1969)
Many of the women Arbus photographs wear their clothes like armor. This is among the last photos she took.
A woman passing on the street (1971)
I half-expected these women to break into "The Ladies Who Lunch." Their bored vulnerability is almost palpable, as if they know that dressing up and meeting for lunch will be the highlight of their day.
Two ladies at the automat, New York City (1966)
Here that vulnerability has curdled into resignation. She's probably "clutching a copy of Life just to keep in touch." Cue "Is That All There Is?"
Woman in a rose hat, New York City (1966)
"Diane Arbus: Constellation" at the Armory includes almost four times as many photos as the 1972 MoMA exhibit. This one hung in both. It absolutely breaks my heart although I can't exactly say why.
A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, New York City (1966)
Do these two couples realize they were photographed by one of the 20th century's most recognizable artists and that their images have been exhibited for decades? Did it make any difference at all in their lives? Are they still together? Inquiring minds want to know.
Young couple on a bench in Washington Square Park, New York City (1965)
A young man and his girlfriend with hot dogs in the park, New York City (1971)
I'd like to think there's hope for a better future in this clear-eyed gaze. A white woman with a fancy camera had just asked permission to take his picture and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law the same year.
A young Negro boy, Washington Square Park in New York City (1965)
But one look at this disturbing photo tells you everything you need to know about the persistence of Black poverty in the United States, even after the creation of the so-called "Great Society."
