Also this issue: Puh-leeze Don't Squeeze the Artwork! Polly Apfelbaum’s work is a tactile wonderland. -Robin Rice Artsbeat -Debra Auspitz Denyce Graves -David Shengold Hands Across Veronica -Debra Auspitz Eric Schlosser -A.D. Amorosi Hillary Rodham Clinton Living History -Lori Hill "Stuffing Birds, Pressing Plants, Shaping Knowledge: Natural History in North America 1730-1860," -Kristina Weise These Mortal Coils Norman Rush details a marriage from the inside out. -Justin Bauer

June 19-25, 2003

theater

There's Something About Mary

by David Anthony Fox

Has theater ever been gayer? On June 8, Broadway's venerable Tony Awards went gay: The year's big winners were Hairspray and Take Me Out, and the televised ceremony featured lots of life-partner-thanking, and even some same-sex-partner kissing! Last week, right here at home, we had the first Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival, a labor of love by co-producers Matthew Cloran and Bill Esher.

PGLTF ambitiously produced 13 events over six days, and many of the plays were originals. I saw one of its featured attractions, the paradigmatically gay-titled Mary, Don't Ask!, by local favorite Michael Ogborn.

As Mary begins, drag queen Lois de Nominator ("Lois de Nominator Can't Get Any Lower" was her motto) has just died, a 55-year-old victim of lung cancer. But Lois -- born Marty, a blue-collar Irish lad -- leaves behind more than just a string of jokes and a pair of falsies. There's a family legacy here too: particularly tough-as-nails (and profoundly religious Catholic) sister Kathleen, who has never been able to recover from what she sees as Marty's betrayal. Kathleen's family -- husband Bill and daughter Patricia, who will be Marty's chief beneficiary -- were both more accepting, and try to help Kathleen find some peace. But it will take a deliciously comic, Song of Bernadette-like intervention for Kathleen to truly see the light.

Drag plays have actually been a significant genre in the last 30 years or so. Masters of form are Harvey Fierstein, and of course the two brilliant Charleses -- Ludlam and Busch. All three (themselves sensational drag performers) created works that fused camp with social commentary, and in fact the legacy of their plays goes far beyond mere star vehicles.

Ogborn -- an experienced writer of musicals who here is embarking on his first, uh, "straight" play -- has learned his lessons well, though the emphasis in Mary is at least as much on Catholicism as on drag, and in the end the play is really a family comedy. The script, presented here in an under-rehearsed but enthusiastic production, is a bit too ploddingly set up, and the final scene is too tidy and treacly. But it is very amusing, with a number of the best one-liners I've heard in several seasons. Standouts in the cast were Anne Cruzan as an energetic little fire-plug of a Kathleen and Robert MacCallum, both funny and touching as Marty.

Mary deserves an encore ditto the entire Festival, a brave and worthwhile effort. Festival founders Cloran and Esher promise that PGLTF will be an annual event. Fine by me. Let the gaymes begin!