It is easy to brave behind closed doors.
You can articulate the most intimate secrets and no one will hear you, unless you choose to let them. But the whole equation changes when you are suddenly thrust into the spotlight, or like Harry Hay (Doug Hansell), and his lover, Rudi Gernreich (Daniel Scott), founders of America’s first gay rights organisation, the Mattacine society, choose to step right into it.
And step into it Harry boldly does, with a more reticent Rudi following as close behind as he can. Harry is a deeply frustrated man. Forced to shelter deep within a closet, which includes marriage to a woman he cares for, but doesn’t truly love, or feel attraction for, he yearns for far more. He wants to live a life with the man he falls in love over a series of clandestine encounters, Rudi, that is as open and free, and recognised by society as that of his heterosexual forbears.
But instead he is forced to hide behind code words – “temperamentals” was code for homosexual back in the 1950s – deny his true feelings, and tone down his innate flamboyance (he takes to wearing brightly coloured scarves later in life), all to keep society comfortable. Emboldened by the spirit of defiance he encounters in Rudi and like-minded souls, he forms the Matticine society with a bold manifesto that he expects everyone else to believe in as fervently as he does.
But the beauty of the play, by Jon Marans, which is peppered with wry observations, witty lines, and heartbreaking truths, is that it doesn’t turn Harry, Rudi and those that eventually join them – Bob the clown plagued by inner demons (Mark Dessaix), and Dale and Chuck (Ben McIvor and Brett Rogers respectively) – into paper-thin gay stereotypes. They are rendered as complex, flawed men, all struggling to find their place in a society that says they have no worthwhile role.
Obviously they reject that, Harry most aggressively, but not all of them are prepared to nail their colours to the mast and make a declaration. That they are forced to do so when one of their number is falsely accused of soliciting gay sex in a men’s room, and is tried in court, is borne more by necessity than passion pursuit of exposure.
Well with the exception of Harry, who emboldened by his love for Rudi, and free of his marriage is determined to make himself as visible as possible. This costs him a great deal in the end, not least the love of Rudi who reluctantly walks back into the closet in order to claim his place as one of the most celebrated costume designers of Hollywood’s golden age. It breaks his heart and Harry’s but it underlines beautifully that not all the men who joined this movement were of the one mind, and that they all approached the fight for equality with their heterosexual brethren in different ways and at different tempos.
And that is the beauty of this play. It resists the temptation to show all gay men as identical. They may all yearn for freedom from oppression, but go about in different ways, with makes sense since gay people are as diverse in their outlook and aspirations as the rest of society. Jon Marans portrayed this deftly and cleverly, and underlined the inhumanity and it’s consequences on wildly different people. who all react in different ways, as you’d expect.
It is powerful play because it resist easy answers and portrayals. You are left feeling as if you have met five real men grappling with who they are, and the best way to make society acknowledge their uniqueness. The means may vary but the yearning is the same, and it is as powerful as it is moving, especially in the hands of a cast, and a director as talented as the ones directing this production at the New Theatre.
