Love! Valour! Compassion! Review
by Edward Johnson-ott (PBBP24A AT prodigy DOT com)December 11th, 1997
Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)
Jason Alexander, Randy Becker, Stephen Bogardus, John Glover, John Benjamin Hickey, Justin Kirk, Stephen Spinella. Directed by Joe Mantello.
Rated R, ** and one half stars (out of *****)
Review by Ed Johnson-Ott
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I saw Terrence McNally’s LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! on Broadway a couple of summers ago. I’d already purchased tickets for Dan Butler’s outstanding one man show "THE ONLY THING WORSE YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME" and only had time to see one other play while in New York. Here’s how I selected L!V!C! I read the theater listings on the Internet, looking for gay plays with male nudity. There were two major ones and the postings I read indicated that both featured about the same amount of flesh. L!V!C! had won the Tony for best play and I thought "Great! Art AND dicks!" There, now you know how shallow I am.
The simple truth is that lots of guys are just like me and theatrical productions exploit that to the hilt. Many mediocre plays, both gay and straight, have enjoyed long profitable runs by tossing in lots of nudity. When I left the theater after three long hours of LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION!, I reflected on the experience. I’d had a fine time looking at the naked guys, particularly Randy Becker as a Puerto Rican dancer, and an awful time suffering through the actual play. That a production as mawkish and gimmicky as this won a Tony flattened me. If this was the best drama, Broadway must have had a terrible year.
Now LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! is a movie, with the Broadway cast intact, save for Nathan Lane being replaced by SEINFELD’s Jason Alexander. L!V!C! the movie is definitely better than L!V!C! the play. For one thing, it’s an hour shorter, and the editing helps. And, being a movie, you get a much better view of the naked guys.
Set at a secluded Victorian house on the edge of a beautiful lake, L!V!C! tells of eight gay men who gather over three holiday weekends one summer. The house belongs to Gregory (Stephen Bogardus,) a middle-aged choreographer and his younger, blind lover Bobby (Justin Kirk.) Their guests include John (John Glover,) a bitter English composer, and his current boy toy Ramon (the aforementioned Becker;) John’s twin brother James, who is HIV+ and as sweet as his brother is surly (the twins’ last name is Jeckyll...too clever, eh?;) Buzz (Alexander,) a flamboyant show tune aficionado; and Arthur (John Benjamin Hickey) and Perry (Stephen Spinella,) a couple celebrating fourteen years together.
The men hang out and mostly spout the kind of theatrical chatter that you would never hear in real life. The continuing relationship of the group is puzzling. John is intensely hateful at every conceivable opportunity, yet he gets invited back. Ramon has a brief affair with Bobby that nearly destroys Bobby and Gregory’s relationship, yet he gets invited back. Two of the guys are caught hiding in a closet eavesdropping on a painful encounter between John and Ramon, yet they get invited back. These men are either far more forgiving than anyone I’ve ever met or simply gluttons for punishment.
L!V!C! has its pleasures. The dialogue, windy though it may be, is often funny and occassionally very touching. Jason Alexander gives a strong performance. Initially he appears to be doing an impression of Nathan Lane, but after a few minutes he seems to find his footing and makes the character his own. Despite being saddled with the twin roles, John Glover almost succeeds in making the viewer forget the gimmick. His James is a particularly nice creation; bedecked in flowing clothes and a straw sun bonnet, James is a painfully kind and loving person. A flowering romance between him and Buzz is one of the highlights of the story.
L!V!C! deserves credit for presenting a non-stereotypical, intimate portrait of a group of gay men to a mainstream audience. It’s a shame though, that for the most part, these guys are boring. Not much happens in L!V!C!, and aside from Alexander and Glover’s characters, the men are pretty bland. That’s fine if you’re trying to show heterosexuals that gays are really just plain folks. If you’re trying to construct a drama, though, it really helps to have characters that are actually interesting. For better or worse, L!V!C! struggles mightily to be a gay version of THE BIG CHILL, but lacks the color and sense of motion necessary to pull it off. It sure has a lot of naked guys, though! What a shame to see so many penises wasted on a mediocre story.
copyright 1997, Ed Johnson-Ott
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