Unnatural Acts

Since it's roughly the temperature of Hades outside, I've canceled my Friday plans, so it's as good a time as any to get (almost) caught up on posts.My original goal had been to never be more than two shows behind. Spring threw that out the window, but here I am back on track.

So let's talk about Unnatural Acts at the Classic Stage Company. A nonfiction play about a group of gay men at Harvard in the 1920s who were brought up against a secret court after the suicide of one gay student led to a witch hunt to ferret out the names and activities of the other gay students on campus, the play was sharply written, beautifully performed, and deeply moving.

Really, the whole thing was just really, really good. It begins with the discussion of Cyril's funeral. Ken Day is the heartthrob on the swim team who seems to have had a relationship with Cyril in the past. Eugene Cummings pines after Ken but doesn't ever reveal his feelings, even if his roommate, the flamboyant Edward Say, can see right through him. Say spends a ton of time with Ernest Roberts, a Senator's son who can get away with anything...and does. These four, among many others, periodically find themselves in Roberts' room, Perkins 28, which has become the center of Harvard gay life.

After Cyril's death, a letter is discovered (how? by who? all will be revealed) indicating that he was gay and that Ken Day was as well. Day is called in to see the powers that be for an interview that was unbearably uncomfortable to watch. "Have you had sexual relations with women? Have you had sexual relations with men? How often do you masturbate?" Overwhelmed and trying to hold onto his reputation as much as he can, Ken gives the court the names of other men he knows to be gay.

The show progresses showing people facing the notion of losing their futures, wrestling with throwing other people to the lions to save themselves, and most interestingly, with the idea that as vile as the court's actions were, their intentions though born of ignorance, were largely intended to protect young men from lives that would ruin them or lead them to actions like Cyril's. The strengths of the script are in never taking the easy way out and demonizing the "bad guys." They aren't presented in a terribly favorable light, of course, but they are allowed to be understood, especially by the time you discover how everything began. The show is also balanced by a solid balance of joy and pain. As dark as the material is, we're given enough moments of flirtation and frivolity to not only balance the mood, but also to show what is being lost.

The cast was crazy good. Especially high marks to Brad Koed as the mild-mannered Eugene whose sincerity and confusion were equally heartbreaking without being overplayed, Frank De Julio as aspiring actor Keith Smerage who is absurdly likeable until he turns in the most crushingly cruel scene, and Roe Hartrampf as the absurdly attractive, deeply conflicted Ken. Well...he played him as deeply conflicted. He just IS absurdly attractive.

Most surprising was that the last few minutes of the show involved a choreographed movement piece as one character delivered an imperative final speech. Even more surprising than he fact that this play went for an interprative dance finale? That it worked incredibly well.

It's a rare play that is both crushing AND entertaining. Though it's a lesser play (and that is not an insult), it reminded me a bit of Ruined in that way. All in all, it's just a really, really good show.