Kate Mulley

Tomorrow I have rehearsal for a reading of my newest play, Strange Bare Facts. It’s been a very difficult piece to write because there has been so much research involved. A lot of times I’ll have fantastic ideas for plays and they’ll sit in half-written forms on my computer waiting for me to return to them and this play could have gone that way many times over the past 7 months. But I was lucky enough to hear about the NYU Forum on Theatre for Public Health and even luckier for my play proposal to be accepted. The forum begins on Thursday and my reading is on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, it’s only open to forum participants, but I hope to continue to work on the play using feedback from the reading.

For people interested in the project, this is the proposal: Strange Bare Facts is a play about a lesser-known figure in the history of public health and epidemiology in 20th century England. J. Alison Glover was a soldier in the Boer War, a doctor on the front in World War I and was instrumental in keeping soldiers from catching disease. His early dedication to understanding health care variation through his study of tonsillectomies was groundbreaking and is still cited today. The play draws from both contemporary and historical episodes in its exploration of Glover‘s life and its legacy. Strange Bare Facts educates and entertains its audience by telling the story of a man with a very contemporary perspective who hoped to change the way medicine was provided to patients, facing adversity, war and critics. An inspiring story for health care practitioners and anyone interested in how we can treat patients more effectively and more productively.

The past week was filled with a handful of Broadway shows, some not great, some fantastic. Tuesday night I saw That Championship Season at the last minute and found it pretty dreadful. It’s a play about a championship basketball team coming together 20 years after they won the state championship. They have reunions every year but this one is different (kinda) because there are all of these secrets to expose. Except that the secrets weren’t all that interesting. I kept waiting for the big reveal and it ended up being pretty uneventful. The play explores the changing role of white male hegemony between the 50s and 70s and part of the problem seemed to be that much of the  audience seemed to agree with the racist, sexist things being said. It’s possible that I’m projecting, but the way the audience reacted to off-color jokes or remarks seemed to be positive as opposed to uncomfortable… Which confused me slightly. And despite an pretty all-star cast, it was just lackluster all around. Quite disappointing.

Not at all disappointing was Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I’ve never seen the movie, but was excited to continue my love for plays about/starring drag queens with this show. And it exceeded my expectations. Three drag queens travel from Sydney to Alice Springs in a bus so that one of them can meet his young son. Filled with disco/top 40 hits and boasting some of the craziest costumes I’ve ever seen, Priscilla was an utter delight. And I have a new raging crush on Nick Adams, who plays Adam/Felicia. So much so that I wrote my first piece of fan mail on a vintage peacock postcard (it seemed appropriate). That’s right. I’m 27 years old and I wrote my first piece of fan mail last night to an actor who plays a drag queen. Apparently some changes were made to the show to make it more “Broadway-friendly” and tone it down slightly from the Australian and West End versions. And while this a little frustrating from an artistic perspective, I’m sure the family with young children sitting in front of me were pleased. Even so there were probably going to be a lot of questions about what they had seen. But I would recommend it to anyone. It’s a fantastically over-the-top theatrical experience and worth it to see the number of costume changes alone!

Have realized that my theatrical tastes now encompass over the top musicals(preferably with drag queens) and witty erudite plays and very little in between. I suppose it makes sense considering my introduction to the theatre was through movie musicals, but it’s a little incongruous.

Saturday night, I saw the new Stephen Adly Guirgis play, The Motherfucker with the Hat. For what sounds like it should be a provocative show (profanity in the title! Chris Rock!), it fell flat overall. The pre-show buzz was that the play was great but that Chris Rock was not, so those were my expectations coming into it. By the end of the play, I was disappointed with the play and pleasantly surprised by Rock’s performance (he reminded me of Julianne Moore in The Vertical Hour in that he acted the way I probably would if I found myself on Broadway in 8th grade– too many small hand gestures and the uncanny ability to get stuck in an awkward pose).

Guirgis is well-known for his gritty, urban, clever plays. He’s one of the most popular playwrights at the Drama Book Shop. I had read some other plays of his, but never had the opportunity to see one and was looking forward to the experience. Sadly, the premise of the play is so tiny in its scope that there’s really nothing to behold. A man on parole, trying to stay sober, suspects his girlfriend since 8th grade of cheating on him. His sponsor, who’s been sober for 15 years, lets him stay with him while he gets his thoughts on track. Fine. The dialogue is occasionally laugh out loud funny but as my “playmate” said had “too many words.” Everyone was saying everything they could. And it was exhausting. And then every plot twist that you could expect happens. Which is not what I remember from Guirgis’ other plays.

And so, putting on my producer hat, I wonder why this play premiered on Broadway. Couldn’t the Public have produced this and maybe the pressure of catering to the Broadway audience would be avoided? Put profanity and Chris Rock on Broadway and people (tourists?) shy away from it. Put it downtown and the show might sell out. And if you’re going to put profanity and Chris Rock onstage, at least make it interesting so that people are scandalized and there’s a buzz about the content of the play rather than the title. Instead there’s some goofy stage combat and one fleshed out character out of five.*

*I almost feel bad for being so negative about this play, but when you’ve enjoyed other work by a playwright and they appear to be phoning it in (I felt this way about Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts), it’s disappointing. There are too many good plays out there not getting produced to see boring plays about romantic/addiction issues. I also think that there’s an an assumption that audiences will recognize a playwright’s name. Unless their name is David Mamet or Tennessee Williams (and even so!), that’s not true.