GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM at the Park Theatre - ...In Gay Years...

Forty years ago this year, Martin Sherman's play BENT opened at the Royal Court Theatre.  Originally written for the Gay Sweatshop theatre group, they passed on it hoping a bigger theatre company would do it so the play could be seen by a wider audience.  It was initially rejected by the Royal Court while Hampstead would only stage it if a gay director did it, but none came forward.  The Court eventually staged it with the star power of Ian McKellen and Tom Bell but the management still disapproved.  No leading West End producers wanted it until producer Eddie Kulukundis took it to the Criterion but only on the agreement with the Society of West End Theatre that it would be gone by December as the Society felt it would be distasteful to be seen at Christmas time in the West End.

In those forty years, gay plays and musicals have found an easier journey to the stage usually through the tried and tested route of either the subsidized theatre or fringe stages.  Those forty years have also seen a whole societal change for gay men and women in the UK and Martin Sherman's latest play GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM addresses that very idea.

Directed by Sherman's frequent collaborator Sean Mathias, GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM takes place in London between the years 2001 and 2014.  Pianist Beau is an American from New Orleans who has lived mostly in Paris and London since the 1950s, ruefully observing the world around him from a distance and through the prism of his music.  Beau has taken the plunge and met a much younger man called Rufus online through Gaydar.  Beau is taken aback when Rufus reveals that he is actually a fan of his music and, in particular, his years accompanying the legendary cabaret star Mabel Mercer.

It transpires that Rufus - who works in the City of London - loves the films and music from the 1930s onwards and had been aware of Beau's presence online and made the first move.  Beau is skeptical of Rufus' effusiveness - especially when he confesses to being bi-polar - but is slowly charmed by him and his genuine interest in recording Beau's reminiscences of his life as a gay man down the years.  However he refuses to indulge in Rufus' starry-eyed nostalgia, telling him that those years were dangerous and lonely years for gay men: "Someone like Mabel confirmed our misery, and mythologized it, but misery it was - and, as a result, everyone was drunk.”

Rufus moves in and they negotiate his manic spells and Beau's unspoken disbelief that they can possibly have a life together, a combination of his only serious affairs having ended sadly, and his knowing that any new-won rights can just as easily be taken away.  Eventually Rufus confesses that he has fallen in love with Harry, a gay performance artist in his early 20s with an ego bigger than his empathy.  Beau is saddened but maintains a friendship and even acts as the couple's Best Man at their wedding.  While Rufus and Harry dwindle into a semi-bickering married life, Beau realizes that happiness can arrive just when you wouldn't suspect it...

Sherman's work can sometimes take on too many themes - I shudder to remember his clunky 1989 play A MADHOUSE IN GOA which even Vanessa Redgrave couldn't rescue - but here the bulk of 20th Century gay experience isn't as unwieldy, thanks in no small part to Beau being such a fascinating character, aloof from the world's cruelties but surprising himself at his capacity to feel.  At times it reminded me of another Sherman play called ROSE which starred Olympia Dukakis at the National Theatre which, while an admirable one-woman feat, finally wore you out as the eponymous Everywoman figure hit every major Jewish experience in the 20th Century like a crazed bagatelle.   Here, because Beau is imparting his stories to Rufus, the experiences of living through Mabel Mercer, AIDS, the shocking 1973 UpStairs lounge arson attack and gay soldiers in WWII New York, doesn't seem such information overload.  Beau got through it all... and he's still here.

This is helped by Jonathan Hyde's exquisite performance as Beau; looking at times like a slightly pissed-off parrot, Hyde's wonderfully acerbic patrician Beau showed subtle changes of thought with delicate expressions of under-played humanity.  It is remarkable to think that the 2017 premiere of GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM off-Broadway starred Harvey Fierstein as Beau, a radically different interpretation I am sure.

The roles of Rufus and Harry cannot help but pale next the the all-encompassing Beau but Ben Allen and Harry Lawtey both eased their performances into the spaces around Hyde's to give him plenty to react to, Lawtey in particular, was very good at turning the initially ghastly feckless Harry into a character with hidden depth.  Sean Mathias might have had some misfires before but here his direction was nuanced and illuminating.

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM certainly sends you into the night musing on Sherman's arguments of the changing gay experience and I hope it will be seen by a wider audience than us lucky few who have seen it at The Park.

In thinking back on Martin Sherman's work, I am now hoping that one day we will see a revival of his remarkable play WHEN SHE DANCED based on Isadora Duncan's later years in the 1920s Riviera - but where would you find actresses now who could match the power of Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour?