Tony Kushner words open you up to the raw places within and leave you to laugh, cry, contemplate and lick wounds you forgot were there. Last season we were given the wonderful moving revival of “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” This season the Public Theatre presents “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.” Running nearly four hours Kushner’s complex look at suicide, sacrifice, dysfunctionalism, intelligence and survival is packed with sentences like; “Alzheimers is pretending to forget what we cannot know.”
Pill (Stephen Spinella) has spent $30,000 of his sister’s money on a hooker named Eli (Michael Esper), while his husband Paul (K Todd Freeman) is being ripped apart at the seams. “If you want to know God, don’t marry Satan,” Paul states. The title comes from a thesis Pill has taken thirty three years to write and 7500 pages later is still not finished (theatre lovers will know it is taken from Shaw and Mary Baker Eddy). Shaw is well loved by the playwright,“spinning his contradictions as a head rush, like poppers or speed or E,” much like the play.
The action, for the most part, takes place in the family home in Brooklyn. Gus (Michael Cristofer), a retired longshoreman and a communist, has tried to commit suicide and wants to die and his three adult children and his sister Clio (Brenda Wehle), have been called to decide whether or not he should be allowed to end his life. Clio has run the gamut through religions and is still lost. Through the course of the three acts, Pill, Empty (Linda Emond) and V (Steven Pasquale) discuss or argue collectively theology, ideology and philosophy trying to make sense of it all, while cheating, lying and long-standing resentments are played out. No one is happy, all are empty and, as Gus puts it, “The only real death, is to live a meaningless life. To live is despair.” “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” is multilayer and richly textured and extremely complicated, but hey isn’t that life? What do you do when your ideals have been corrupted?
In the course of the play, we find that the $30,000 was so Maeve (Danielle Skraastad), Empty’s lesbian partner, could have a baby. Since Empty is sleeping with her ex-husband Adam (Matt Servitto), and has given away their money Maeve gets impregnated by Empty’s brother V. This will remind you of “August: Osage County,” only this time it is the whole family that has gone mad.
The entire cast is stellar and at the top of their game. I especially loved Danielle Skraastad, whose performance kept us laughing in a play that is beyond devastating. Rounding off this honed ensemble is Hettienne Park and Molly Price. Shaped by the director of “Angels,” Michael Greif has kept this real as the characters talk over themselves. Though long, it moves just like the terrific set by Mark Wendland; layered, shifting, slowly revealing their secrets until they all break and come falling down.
Hurry to catch this wonderful slice of life by one of the best wordsmiths of this century. You only have until Sunday and this is mostly sold out.
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street. Through June 12. Running time: 3 hours 35 minutes.
Posted by Suzanna Bowling
on June 10, 2011. Filed under ENTERTAIMENT,Theatre.
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