Love! Valour! Nudity!

Originally published:

By Todd Camp

I was first exposed to Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play Love! Valour! Compassion! when the film adaptation arrived in theaters in 1997. Determined to make the proper comparison with its source material, I drove to Houston that same weekend to catch the Alley Theatre's staging at the play's Texas premiere.

Both experiences proved powerful, making the production's first appearance in the Metroplex this Thursday much too important to experience merely as an audience member.

So I auditioned.

Not that the part was a difficult fit. The role of persnickety, loquacious lawyer Perry Sellars, the uptight half of a gay couple of 14 years, is a role my own partner (of six years) says I was born to play.

Oh, you are Perry, he remarked while re-watching the film recently.

Is that a compliment? I asked, somewhat wounded.

No reply.

Perry is one of eight gay men who gather over a series of holiday weekends at a beautiful lake house in the Hamptons. His partner is Arthur (Stan Graner), a happy-go-lucky accountant with a roving eye.The other couples include Gregory (Dennis Canright), a choreographer (and the group's host) who's gradually losing his touch; and his boyfriend, Bobby (Robert G. Shores), an attractive, self-assured blind man. There's John (Kenny Green), an acerbic pianist whom no one likes, and his occasional boyfriend, Ramon (Eddie Zertuche), a young Latino dancer whose overactive libido shakes the foundations of several relationships. And there are Buzz (Steve Garrett), an aficionado of musical theater, and James (Green again), the ailing, nicer twin brother of John.

As for controversy, director Steve McGaw's production of LVC! has it to spare. Playwright McNally, a Corpus Christi native, has been a lightning rod for protesters recently, with his hotly picketed off-Broadway gay-Jesus play, Corpus Christi. But Fort Worthers probably remember more recent stagings of McNally's Master Class, The Ritz and Lips Together, Teeth Apart.

Gay subject matter helped make successes of shows like FWT's Jeffrey, Stage West's Angels in America and even Dallas Summer Musicals' Rent (coming to Bass Hall in March.) All of LVC! 'scharacters are gay - something not seen in Fort Worth since an obscure early production of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band.

This production also offers locals their first glimpse of onstage nudity in a while. Though local theatergoers might remember early stagings of Oh, Calcutta! and FWT's 1980 production of Equus, recent flashings have been slim. Even Stage West's Angels this year kept the bared bods brief. LVC!'s multiple skinny-dipping scenes seem, especially when you're onstage, to practically revel in the nudity.

And it's not like the thought of mooning the Fort Worth arts community fills me with excitement. It doesn't. In fact, it scares the pants off me (so to speak). Then again, the prudish Perry shows off the least. When I remember what the other guys in the cast have to bare, I'm thankful that I got off light.

Trust me, you should be, too.