Photo Source: Ahron R. Foster
The play is set mostly on a quiet Monday night before Christmas in an unnamed gay bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side (according to Varjas, modeled on the Boiler Room, at Second Avenue and East Fourth Street, a mere stone's throw from the play's home at the Paradise Factory), with occasional flashbacks to a night in the same establishment four years earlier. Present propping up the bar are two men pushing 60: the prissy, intellectually snide, sexually shriveled Charles, who wields his waspish tongue indiscriminately, and the more even-keeled Edmund, a heavy drinker in the past but a recovering alcoholic in the present. Darting in and out is a third regular, the nearly 40 Brendan, a serious cokehead whose habit cost him a job as a cop. Behind the bar dishing out drinks and cracks is 30-something Jeffery, who is sweet-natured but don't cross him.
As the repartee and pronouncements fly, the drama finally begins when handsome Mark, in his mid-30s, arrives. This intriguing piece of fresh meat is at the bar for a blind date with an anonymous Internet friend. Mark is trying to move past the death of his much older lover Scott from a drug overdose four years earlier, and as that time span matches the play's, it's not long before we are meeting Scott in a flashback. He's being supplied with coke by Brendan, who clearly is in love with him.
Varjas ties all this together just a little too neatly while thoughtfully providing mini-catharses for all. In doing so, he addresses such issues as internalized homophobia and the toll it can exact, the invisibility of older gay men to younger ones, the advisability of sexual monogamy, the dangers of enabling addicts, and the underappreciated fabulousness of disco music.
Varjas stages the show effectively on Clifton Chadick's clever set, which gives us a bartender's perspective and yet creates the feeling that we too are in the bar. Standout performances come from Keith McDermott as Charles and Brett Douglas as Jeffery, who make their oft-seen character types fresh and specific. Cameron Pow is a sympathetic, sensitive Mark; Ken Forman is an intriguingly boisterous and likable Scott; and Kevin Boseman creates a strong impression in his brief (and unnecessary) appearance as an annoyed drug dealer out to collect from Brendan. Chuck Blasius is a curiously placid Edmund, though, staying too much on an undifferentiated surface, and Varjas also fails to find much depth in his performance as Brendan, perhaps focusing excessively on the cokehead's twitchy physicality.
Directing and acting in his own play may not have been Varjas' best choice. I would guess that to properly develop the talent he clearly possesses, he needs the sometimes uncomfortable but usually fruitful friction of collaboration.
Presented by Other Side Productions at the Paradise Factory, 64 E. Fourth St., NYC. Dec. 19–Jan. 7. Schedule varies. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.othersideproductions.org.
