Author Archives: Tin Man

Angels in America

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One of my biggest regrets in all my years of theatergoing is that I never saw the Broadway production of Angels in America. I could have; although I was in school in Virginia when both parts played in repertory in 1993-94, I made several trips home to visit my family, and I could have seen it during any of those visits. But I never did. I was very uncomfortable with my sexuality at that point, and in fact I barely saw any theater at all during that time. (A perusal of my Playbill collection informs me that the only Broadway shows I saw in 1993-94 were Kiss of the Spider Woman and She Loves Me.)

I was glad when HBO did a TV version a few years ago, because I finally had a chance to experience the show. But watching it on TV wasn’t the same as seeing it on stage. So I was thrilled last year when the Signature Theater announced a new stage production of the show. We snapped up tickets the day they went on sale, and this week we finally saw it: Part 1 on Tuesday night, and Part 2 last night.

It’s a terrific production, with superb acting all around. It’s just a 160-seat theater — much more intimate than the 975-seat Walter Kerr, where the Broadway production played — so I was thrilled to be able to see one of my major crushes up close: Zachary Quinto as Louis Ironson. Quinto has a decidedly different take on the role than Ben Shenkman did in the HBO production: more intense, more anguished, even a little threatening. I saw hints of Sylar at times. Robin Bartlett, as Hannah Pitt and Ethel Rosenberg, was every bit as good as Meryl Streep; having learned a few weeks ago that my great aunt knew Ethel Rosenberg, it made those scenes even more poignant. Billy Porter, as Belize and Mr. Lies, brought sass, wit and comedy. Bill Heck conveyed a masculine vulnerability as Joe Pitt; his voice sounds like that of a masked superhero carrying the world’s weight. Zoe Kazan as Harper Pitt seemed to be channeling Mary Louise Parker from the HBO production, and she’s a lot shorter than Bill Heck, which took some getting used to, but she was excellent. Robin Weigert as the Angel and the nurse was loopy and compassionate, respectively. Frank Wood as Roy Cohn was appropriately mean and evil.

But the standout was the actor in the role of Prior Walter. Christian Borle is supposed to play the role, but he was absent on both nights, so instead we saw his understudy, Eric Bryant. And it turned out to be his first time in the part. He did a great job: scared, funny, strong, thoughtful. I didn’t realize until I picked up our tickets for Part 2 that it was his debut in the role, but during the bows at the end of Part 1, the other actors had given him pats on the back, which made more sense when I found this out.

Interestingly, sitting in the audience on both nights was Michael Urie — best known as Mark on Ugly Betty, but he also won a Lortel Award last spring for playing Rudi Gernreich in The Temperamentals Off Broadway. He’ll be taking over the role of Prior Walter at the beginning of February. He was sitting a few rows in front of us each night, so it was interesting to occasionally look over and watch him watching the show. I wondered what was going through his mind.

So… last night, during the second intermission, I went over and said hello to him. He was sitting by himself and everyone around him had gotten up to stretch their legs, so I impulsively got up and walked a few rows down to his seat. “Excuse me,” I said. He looked up. “Sorry to bother you… you’re going into this in February, right?” He said he was. I chatted with him for a couple of minutes. I asked how he felt about going into the role, and he said it’s a pretty intense role, and in addition to the performances, he’d watched the understudy in rehearsal earlier that day. I told him I’d enjoyed him in The Temperamentals. I wished him luck in his new role and then walked the few rows back to my seat. I think Matt was mortified. I was a little embarrassed myself; when I talk to actors I’ve seen perform, I feel like a babbling little fanboy.

Anyway, it’s a great production, and I’m so glad I finally got to see it on stage. I have more thoughts on Angels in America, but I’ll leave that to another post.

DADT Repeal

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In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that anti-sodomy laws were permissible under the U.S. Constitution. Seventeen years later, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court overruled that travesty of justice.

In 1993, the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy was instituted. Seventeen years later, Congress is about to repeal another injustice against gay Americans.

I can’t believe this is actually going to happen. Just over a week ago, DADT repeal seemed dead. The Republicans had blocked it not once, but twice. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman could have given up, but instead of just giving repeal their pro forma support and saying, “Sorry, we tried,” they actually worked to make it happen. A standalone bill seemed like a Hail Mary pass — there might not be enough time, and both the House and the Senate would have to pass it.

But it’s happening. At 3:00 p.m. today, the Senate will vote on the actual repeal bill, after 63 senators — including six Republicans — voted this morning to allow a simple majority up-or-down vote on repeal.

I don’t know if it’s significant that each of these mistakes — Bowers v. Hardwick and don’t ask/don’t tell — took the same amount of time, seventeen years, to reverse. Seventeen years is not quite a full generation, although it’s close: a gay person born in 1993 will be able to join the military as an openly gay American when he or she becomes a legal adult next year. Perhaps the seventeen-year time frame is just a coincidence.

What we do know is this: each step toward justice builds on the steps that came before. Before Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, being gay itself was practically a crime. In the 1990s, in a child custody case in Virginia, a judge ruled that a lesbian had no right to custody of her own child because Virginia’s anti-sodomy law made her a felon.

After Lawrence, such a ruling was no longer possible. Opponents of marriage equality can no longer use anti-sodomy laws to show that gay people are unfit to marry or raise children. A weapon in their arsenal was taken away.

And now the ban on gays in the military is about to be repealed. In and of itself, this is a wonderful thing and long overdue. But it will also give more ammunition to the fight for marriage equality. After all, how can you argue convincingly that someone who has served his or her country as a member of the U.S. military should not allowed to marry the person he or she loves, or is unfit to be a parent? We’ll see example after example of openly gay soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen and airwomen; we may not see tons of them right away, but we’ll begin to see more and more of them. Anti-gay bigots will start to see a mismatch between their own stereotyped preconceptions of gay people and the reality out there. A does not compute message will begin to form itself in their heads, and either they will change their minds or their heads will explode.

No victory stands alone. Each one is helped by previous victories and helps to create future victories. Our president likes to quote Dr. King: “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Each step nudges the trajectory a little bit more in the right direction.

Ripping My Music

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I’ve been in the process of ripping my CD collection to iTunes. I have a few hundred CDs, so this is taking a long time. But it’s also making me aware of how many CDs I have that I haven’t listened to in ages, or listened to only once, or never even listened to at all. (Dvorak’s Stabat Mater? When did I buy that?)

I used to have all my CDs sitting in their original jewel cases in a big CD rack, but a few years ago I bought a few hundred Case Logic sleeves and transferred my whole collection into them. I then put the sleeved discs into boxes. My collection takes up a lot less space, but since I no longer have the CDs in a rack with all the spines facing outward, I no longer know what I have in my collection.

I’ve got a ton of classical CDs. During my second year of college, I became interested in classical music. I bought a classical music guide recommending recordings for famous pieces, and I used to pore through it all the time. In Charlottesville I’d go to Plan 9 Records and flip through their offerings and sometimes even buy stuff; I’d do the same thing at Tower Records when I’d come back home to New Jersey and New York.

I became addicted to buying classical music CDs. It continued from college through law school, still in Charlottesville. What I loved most of all were complete collections: all of Mozart’s string quartets in one box, or all of Shostakovich’s quartets, or all of Brahms’s chamber music. They always came in such beautiful cardboard cases; how could I resist? I would stand there in the store, holding it in my hand, looking at the price tag, thinking, oh my god I want to buy this so badly, but I shouldn’t be spending 60 bucks or 80 bucks on CDs, and who knows if I’ll ever listen to some of these pieces? But I wanted them. It wasn’t just about listening to them; it was about having them. I would be paralyzed, standing there in the middle of the store. Reason might win over and I’d put it away and go home. But the next time — or maybe the time after that — the addiction would win. Trembling, excited, I’d go up to the counter and pay for the box of CDs, feeling guilty and ashamed but really wanting it anyway.

I should point out that I was completely in the closet at this point in my life and had no sexual outlet. Make of that what you will.

I was also really picky about which recordings of a piece I’d buy. If the store had a copy of the Penguin Guide or the Gramophone Guide, I’d study the entry intently for the piece I was looking to buy. If the store didn’t carry any of the recordings that were recommended by the guides, I wouldn’t buy them.

Anyway, I’ve been importing my CDs into iTunes one by one, and I’m already benefiting: it’s great to do a search and see everything I have that’s conducted by Leonard Bernstein or Robert Shaw (shaw shaw shaw) (sorry, inside joke), or everything by Mozart, or whatever. I have lots more CDs to import, though. I may need to buy a bigger external hard drive to store it all.