I'll Judge The Book By Its Cover, Thank You Very Much

I'll admit it, I write all of this with a heavy dose of bitterness. It is the bitterness that every writer or behind-the-scenes creative feels when you hear or see someone's trashy, sub-par, half-baked work get some traction while yours doesn't.

A good person uses this as an impetus to try harder.

I am not a good person on a Friday morning. I am in the mood to read some fools, and I'm not talking about in a newspaper.

(A disclaimer: I am willing to revise my opinions, but when you do write ups, you have to realise that you're putting the baggage out in front of the marquee.)

Like most things that piss me off, the source of my anger stems from The New York Blade. This time, it's their article on The New York International Fringe Festival, and for once, it's not The Blade's fault that I'm angry.

In the article The Blade gives a few blurbs about this year's gay and lesbian themed shows. Well, I have to say is that most of these shows look smellier than day-old excrement.

• Romancing The Terrorist: Tajiki Nights - The American president falls in love with a gay Tajik terrorist. I understand satire. I understand absurdism, but this just seems daft as hell. By the way, unless it's a musical, anything that has two authors attached to it is to be avoided like syphilis.
• Don't Ask - An affair between two army men set during the Iraqi War. This actually looks interesting if the execution focuses on the characters as opposed to their situation. Since it's part of the "experimental" group (read: "we just slapped this together and called it art"), I don't hold my hopes up.
• The Saints of Festus - Missouri women get drunk and go wild. Three words that will strike fear into my heart: one. man. show. One man shows are like watching watching solo masturbation porn videos, but even dirtier since you're not allowed to clean yourself up after the writer and performer (even worse when they're the same person) has ejaculated their ego and "aren't I talented?" all over you.
• Blue Balls: In and OUT of Uniform with the NYPD - "Neighbourhood Sissy joins New York's Finest." The fact that this is billed as an "arresting new comedy" makes me think that this will have all the depth of a David Spade/Rob Schneider/Pauly Shore movie with a cameo by Carrot Top. I'm not saying that this couldn't be a comedy--in fact, I think it would be refreshing to see this subject treated with a light flourish instead of the expected "woe is me" sturm-und-drang drama. However, once I read that this is based on the playwright's own experience, the frist thing that came into my head was that this was going to be a revenge play. You know, the kind where you can just sense that the playwright is basically going to make himself out to be the unassailable hero devoid of flaws living in a world full of idiots.
• The Return of the Wayward Son - Bedroom stories from hustlers and their johns. Just read who the sponsor is. I actually like dark stories about prostitution, one of my most favourite plays that I've written is about a male prostitute and he's the protagonist (like a dark, cynical version of Irma La Douce). All that said, how much honesty and character depth could be attached to this piece given that one of the sponsors most likely doesn't quite want all the warts to be shown. By the way, you can write "phantasmagoria" all you want, it still has the air of slapdash writing job on it given the "experimental" classification (see above). Ironically, given the play's genesis, much of what I wrote above about Blue Balls (in respect to unassailable heroes) would apply here.
• Rainy Days & Mondays - Nice Jewish boy(tm) turns circuit queen during the nineties. Based on the website this show looks like style before substance ad infinitum. Kind of like the film Circuit, which--let's be honest here--was basically nothing but good-looking men romping about with an acrid script with good cinematography. Still, based on the playwright's pedigree, I'll grant him that this script is better than Shafer's. But...Jesus wept! The synopsis makes me want to retch! There is a black character who is described as "a sassy Southern African American 'baby boy let loose with a trust fund.'" For starters, "sassy?" Let us just ponder this for a second. How many more "sassy" black characters in gay film and theatre do we need before we actually start getting complex black characters? We don't need to be heroes, but for pete's sake, could we not be the "truth tellin', shut-yo'-mouth" bitchy queens for once? Then there's another character described as "an Adonis from the Midwest with no sexual boundaries." Like that archetype is completely new and fascinating. It's rather ironic that the synopsis claims that "this is not your typical salacious gay play with boys running around in their underwear," since I'd be shocked if it isn't given that summary.