I arrived a few minutes late for the final night’s performance
of the popular, successful and sold-out Gay Camp at HERE Mainstage Theater. The usher said “Ordinarily I would never seat anyone
late, but there’s only one empty seat on the far side, front row. You’ll have
to walk by the stage to get there.” Then he opened the door for me. In a small
theater with only three feet separating the players from the knees in the front
row, I didn’t dare trespass. Instead, I stood in the side aisle and began to
absorb the rapid fire jokes thrown at the audience with an agility that far
surpassed their merit.
Gay Camp is a
cotton candy comedy about a summer camp designed to turn gay kids straight, but
staffed by silly characters who are secretly gay. It includes every one-liner and bit of queeny schtick that
has escaped the mouths of the urban gay in the past few years and has already
been processed into sandwich meat on Glee.
With its heavy reliance on Santorum as the frequent source
of its humor, Gay Camp is seriously
dated. I suspect that when it was new, there was need for the moment in which
the closeted lesbian who wants to ascend to the top job at the camp makes the
audience recite the Google definition of Santorum. Today, and for this
audience, Santorum is either old news or forgotten. I kept wondering how the
playwright could remedy this. Who might he substitute for Santorum? No name
came to mind.
While the exuberant and skillful cast (uniformly skinny
Williamsburg hipster types who seemed to be brothers?) brought forth a pink
vibrator that wouldn’t shut off, a feather boa, an eroticized banana and some
really bad wigs, I began to think that this play might work in fly-over country
and for a very straight/suburban or rural audience with no gay friends who had
already schooled them in modern gay humor. Also, I began to wonder what the
venerable Charles Busch might have done with the topic.
I left before the end, and in the heat of the subway, I
studied the weary faces of the unentertained. I think Gay Camp would be a hit in a subway car with its energetic cast
delivering their lurching kaleidoscope of gaiety for the tired folks riding out
the dirt and humidity of their passage home. In a theater, not so much.
In all fairness, many people laughed loudly and repeatedly
throughout the play. From where I was standing in the aisle, I could clearly
see the faces of the laughers. I don’t know those people and their tribe. I’m
sure they are fine and smart folks, but I just do not know them. Therefore, my
lack of amusement may be more my fault and less the quality of Gay Camp. Or maybe I just wanted to end this
on a kind note, having myself written some lines that turned out not to be
funny.
