THEATRE DOWNTOWN's PRELUDE TO A KISS: A Stage Review

Birmingham, Alabama is like many cities across the United States. There is an abundance of theatrical talent (most of it untapped and under-utilized). Decisions for what plays and musicals to perform are generally safe. Though there are local playwrights (myself included), the idea of a World Premiere probably wouldn’t interest most local theatre companies. Just as in New York, betting your money on a well-known stage work leads to a more attractive economic outlook for the company in question.

As with the rest of the country, community theatres are experiencing small houses and are struggling to limp along. So, to some of you, it may seem cruel to offer a critical review of any community theatre production. In my mind, observant criticism enhances everyone to do their respective jobs better. The fact that any company, full of volunteers who work full time during the day, get together and mount a show at night is a miracle of its own and I would never tread on such an endeavor except out of love and care for the art form.

Although it’s late in the game, I highly recommend you support local theatre and go see Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss at the Encore Theatre and Gallery in a production by the itinerant company Theatre Downtown (click here to donate so they can find a permanent home).

I first came across Lucas’ play in my early teens. I learned reading so many plays a semester would be required at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and, in their small library, I came across a slim paperback with a picture of Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan in a “movie-tie-in” print of the play. I read Prelude and I fell in love. Who wouldn’t? With smart, punchy, stichomythic dialogue and an enchanting, romantic tale, I was spellbound. Many years later, my mentor David Henry Hwang introduced me to Lucas and I’m proud to own a signed copy.

Prelude premiered on the West Coast in the late ‘80s. On the surface, it is a “normal” (except for the fairy tale aspect) heterosexual love story. Beneath it, however, is an entirely different meaning that most critics picked up on, if not audiences. Lucas, a gay man, was watching an entire generation die of HIV/AIDS and Prelude was a commercial response to the epidemic. Peter, a yuppy from New York, finds that the soul of his beloved Rita has swapped into the body of an old man dying of cancer. In the early days of AIDS, it was, of course, a death sentence. Young men quickly got cancers that mostly affected the elderly and animals and aged/died with frightening alacrity.

As many people now live entire lives with the syndrome, Prelude is mostly seen as a breezy, facile comedy with funny dialogue. But, beneath all that, there is still a seriousness about the horror and beauty of living. When I first read it, I assumed it was to be played at the speed with which Theatre Downtown delivers it—a rollercoaster ride of riffing. That’s why, when I saw the film version, I was utterly devastated at its slow pace. Why was this breezy play turned into such a wooden movie?

As a young teenager, though, I didn’t understand the depth of the play—the way certain lines need to breathe and be savored by both the actor and the audience member. Theatre Downtown’s version was the version I had in my head as a kid, but, as an adult, I wanted it to breathe a little, allowing the story’s deeper meaning to wash over the audience. Suddenly, I wanted something in between the pace of the film and the pace of this production.

While it is perhaps wrong to criticize a production based on its locality, Encore Theatre and Gallery, at least on the night in question, had backed-up sewage in the restrooms, loud, whirring fans in the performance space, and such dim lighting in the lobby areas I was amazed no one in the audience fell. Those fans in particular made hearing the play almost impossible in certain instances. Working with a few actors miked and most not, one had to strain to hear lines I know so well I could probably quote them. Again, this is not the fault of the production. The staging, however, is.

Carron Clark is the director and the resulting work smacks of a trend I’m seeing more and more: directors are not using the performance space to its full potential. Oh, there’s a lot of movement in this Prelude, including actors walking around the audience and exiting through aisles, but when the action is back onstage, the blocking works against the material, obscuring some potentially beautiful moments. I sat in two different sections for each act and still found myself missing small moments which (again) went by so fast I might have missed them even if the stage space had more room.

While the script used is an updated acting edition from the playwright, Prelude is very much a play of its time and, perhaps, should remain a period piece of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. To have left the lines alone would have been best as the early political discussion between Peter and Rita no longer applies in the contemporary climate anyway. Why playwrights revisit their work after they are established classics, I'll never understand.

All photos courtesy of Steven Ross

Tim Seale plays Peter with an urgency and earnestness that is much admired. Sometimes, however, that urgency results in him speaking over other people’s lines. While the piece does call for overlapping dialogue, when Seale is miked and others are not, a lot of the scenes are lost or confused. Seale keeps the piece moving so hurriedly that some of Peter’s character trajectory (his confusion on the honeymoon) is not given its due course. So frenetic were his impulses that his great line at the end of the play (“Never to be squandered…the miracle of another human being”) became a directive for Rita to “never be squandered” the night I saw it.

Sara James’ Rita is fine when she is playing the real Rita, but when her soul is swapped with that of the Old Man (Jack Heidt), James comes off as much too abrasive. One could argue this is a good choice because the Old Man wants to continue inhabiting Rita’s body and Peter is getting in the way of his happiness, but changing tone alone is not enough to sell the part. I wonder what kind of performances we would have gotten from the leads if they were allowed to fall in love and learn about each other rather than race through Act One as if the theater was about to be leveled to the ground.

The supporting players are a lot of fun to watch, particularly Alex Williams in the small roles of Thom and the Jamaican waiter and Lesli Johnson as Peter’s friend Taylor. Rita’s parents are played by Bates Redwine and Penny Thomas, the latter of which I saw recently in a production of How I Learned to Drive. While she was miscast in that part, leaving the theatre, I found the scenes with the Boyles were perhaps the best realized and I walked away with a great respect for Thomas’ performance. Debbie Smith plays both Aunt Dorothy and Leah with tremendous utility and is a delight to watch, particularly in the wedding scene.

The principal problem with the show is its production design. While the props can and perhaps should be minimal (and they are), sound design is not used to its fullest extent. While the production has a great song-score (though, oddly enough, neglecting to include the song which inspired the play’s title—a classic from Duke Ellington), there is a great lost opportunity in not including the rumbling and the wind that Lucas requires in his script for the magical moments which would have elevated this production consequentially. Instead, when the soul-swapping occurs, we have a simple brief black out in silence. It’s a missed opportunity to conjure the kind of real magic the play exudes.

With all that said, one can have a nice night at theatre if not an enchanting one. The play deserves more than that and yet, it was nice to be in a place where people are keeping theatre alive. Support Theatre Downtown and its endeavors and all the other players in the Magic City.

Prelude to a Kiss has two final performances: Friday and Saturday, July 26-27 at 7:30

Prelude to a Kiss

by Craig Lucas

Directed by Carron Clark

Theatre Downtown

At Encore Theatre and Gallery

213 Gadsden Hwy; Suite 108

Life, Death, & Politics in 2024

NOTE: This author is neither a member of any form of political party nor does he endorse any political candidate. Some do not believe this, but there are apolitical people who don’t see politics in every element of life. We like to think for ourselves and are never collectivist. We are a rare, but proud breed.

It hadn’t been that long since I had re-read the libretto and listened to the score for the Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman musical Assassins. A revue-style work, its Off-Broadway premiere was cut short due to the Persian Gulf War and its Broadway premiere delayed due to the events on September 11th, 2001. At both junctures, it was thought the subject matter too transgressive, being about all the presidential assassins as well as some of those who made the attempt.

I first saw Assassins in a confused production at a local university (the Balladeer somehow became a preening Vegas lounge lizard in a pink suit) and walked away feeling, for the first time with a Sondheim musical, that I hadn’t gotten a real show—something with more substantive meat than just some well-written sketches and some mildly terrifying songs. Company makes me feel a little similar and both musicals leave me cold emotionally. They do not give you a pay-off like a show with a plot. 

Company is better than Assassins because the characters all seem to be rather fleshed out and you can see them having lives outside of the little vignettes. Assassins is written in a timeless vacuum where various historical figures interact with each other to very American styles of music and little of typical Sondheim except lyrical brilliance and, of course, perfect music for that kind of sketch show. Re-reading it, I was more deeply unsettled than ever before to the point where I probably would never want to see it onstage again since the guns are often pointed at the audience. Still, I think it should be performed—because it does say something. Something about the American dream promising a bit too much, something about people who are unable to connect to one another, something about how mental illness, not political aims, are the reasons for such would-be assassins more often than not.

I didn’t witness last weekend’s assassination attempt in real time. I don’t watch the news and many of you will think that a good reason not to write this piece, but I can’t control that. I know enough of politics to know to not let it make you apoplectic. But this news spread like wildfire. Frankly, I think most of us have expected something of this kind would happen to one or another of the candidates during this race—a race, no matter on which side you lean—being kind of a “civil war” in the sense that the election will be two completely different forms of societies fighting for their version of the future.

In this world of knee-jerk reactions, the first post on X I encountered was from a playwright. “If you’re going to do it, EXECUTE!” was the statement and I recoiled in horror. Then, with Instagram, came everything from ironic anecdotes about people reaping what they sow. When Biblical verses get misread by both the right and the left, you can tell madness is on the way. That is the true form of our society—madness.

I have believed the same things about politics my entire life, even as I’ve seen many presidents come and go. The right has always not exactly used their noggins to the fullest potential and the left routinely breaks your heart by promising what they cannot deliver. As it was in Ancient Rome, so it is now. Both sides make me furious. There is no place left for centrists. And the words “liberal” and “conservative have become curse words, for whatever reason. The news and politics and ideology do not have to be a part of my life. I don’t wish to engage in posting slacktivist comments, ripping people to shreds with hastily gathered statistics, and shaming people. I try to vote without talking about it. That’s actually how I think it should be with Americans and yet it never has been that way.

It is a given fact that the rhetoric used in 21st century American politics is tearing us apart. Somehow I knew in the back of my mind (because one doesn’t have to be psychic), progressives would use this opportunity to post tasteless jokes—inhuman, even—and the traditionalists would start thinking conspiratorially. Everything about this incident fits patterns that have been around for some time: a misfit in society who turned to weapons to either impress or make an impression.

What is a president? They are, generally, not people I admire. I think the job requires a certain ruthlessness and the best presidents have been ruthless, corrupt often, and criminals in some cases. When someone is actually a good or honorable person gets the job, like Jimmy Carter (a man I immensely admire) and Thomas Jefferson (who I admire with all his flaws), they are often ineffectual Commanders-in-Chief. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want that job, but the ones that are the best at it are geniuses at arm-bending back-room skullduggery (Lincoln, Roosevelt), being shrewd, over-confident, and prone to lying as if it were their damned jobs (Kennedy, Clinton), and any other number of very human tendencies. I’m not sure why to be a good president, you must lack some very basic aspects of humanity, but it just seems so.

I have been chastised for staying out of the madding fray and, thus, branded right-wing by people who don’t know me. I am nothing of the kind. But, when an assassination attempt occurs, I’m sympathetic. It is true people die under the watches of presidents, but the presidents are humans also.

I wonder how much negativity and screaming every four years I can take. I wonder it every time. People live to tear down people online. Some, like the attempted assassinator, take the matter further.

Like Alice, worried in Wonderland, I don’t want to go around mad people and, so, I stay out of politics. But I can say for certain I never wish for death on anyone. I was shocked to see so many friends of mine—gifted, intelligent—who would’ve gotten what they wanted if the man was killed and would have relished it.

A sick, sick time.

To better times!

Two is the Loneliest Number

Harry Nilsson’s song “One,” most famously covered in two distinct but perfect recordings by Three Dog Night and Aimee Mann (the latter used for the title sequence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia) is a song that has been in my head for several months now and I couldn’t quite figure out why. It is not simply that it is an earworm. It is not that I am a die-hard Nilsson fan (especially given his awful songs for Robert Altman’s Popeye). I think it might have to do with the fact that loneliness has naturally become one of the more prominent themes of my writing life. As far back as my first one-act play, betrayal and deceit in relationships has been a standard theme and the resulting, crushing solitude a given in plot points and the subject of many poems, yet I’ve refrained from dealing with it in essay form until now.

Most of my life I have lived with people, but the essential loneliness of life stays with me. It’s perfectly captured in a song from Stephen Sondheim’s musical about marriage, Company. Multiple husbands answer Robert’s question, “Are you ever sorry you got married?” One of the lyrical replies is, “You hold her thinking, 'I’m not alone.';/You’re still alone.” Which is so horribly, horribly true. I have never been married, but I have observed marriages my entire life and there is still, at the core of them, two lonely people who have found each other but still know, at any time, their connection is ephemeral, can be taken away at any moment or could be a complete sham.

There is a part of me that craves solitude and a part that detests it. As a baby, there was a 24-hour period where I screamed bloody murder. My mother gave me everything she could to satisfy me—food, toys, diaper changes, etc. Finally, throwing her hands up, she put me in my crib and shut the door. Within seconds, my screaming stopped and I was happily playing by myself, swatting at whatever contraption hung above me. I think that’s a very large part of who I am and, given that writing is a solitary profession, it is a useful aspect of my life. Yet, there are times when I hunger for connections which have almost always been out of reach. However, in the relationships I’ve had, I come back to Nilsson’s song: “Two can be as bad as one./It’s the loneliest number since the number one.” That’s the line that really troubles me because, like Sondheim’s, it has great truth and truth can be hard on the soul.

Until fourth grade, girls were always my best friends. As soon as I started seeing them in a romantical way, I have had almost zero close friends who are women except for wives of friends and, even then, we don’t tend to be as close as I to their male counterparts. I’m not entirely sure the reason for this phenomenon. It is just another fact of who I am. My subsequent history with women has been muddled, to be sure. My first kiss was one given out of self-pity. The giving party cared about me because I was vulnerable; she was older and wiser. It was a “gosh-that’s-so-cute-of-him-kiss.” It meant something, just not what I’d intended. My first girlfriend was another older woman (eighth grade when I was in seventh) and there was virtually no connection at all except many boring phone calls, though I am glad she introduced me to the overlooked romantic comedy Only You with Robert Downey, Jr. and Marisa Tomei.

My high school experience was uncommon, of course, attending a performing arts school. I had no time for interpersonal relationships much. I was too focused on my burgeoning acting career. Nevertheless, there were two relationships of note. I had one public girlfriend and one secret one (for reasons I shan’t discuss at this time). Both were fellow actresses. Neither were such negative experiences as to scar my life or anything, but they had tremendous highs and treacherous lows particularly with the secret one. Those were the first days I experienced what I now know is depression.

My first real relationship was in college. It was the longest lasting, clocking in at two and a half years and, though I posture sometimes, the break up was something I never quite got over. We will call her Dawn. We will call her "replacement" Malia. I’ve never told this story in anything but allegorical ways (see my play The Summer Bobby(ie) Lee Turner Loved Me, originally produced under the title And They Heard the Thunder of Angels), so bear with me.

Dawn and I met acting in a workshop of an original musical. I was much too embarrassed to say anything to her up front, but as my freshman year was concluding, I called her dorm number and left a voicemail expressing how much I had enjoyed working with her. I never received a call back. Summer came and my determination to have someone nagged at me quite a bit. A friend who was soon to enlist in the Air Force drove me to Vermont for my sophomore year. He, my roommate, and I were having a discussion. I would either pursue Dawn or another person. We all chose Dawn. Dawn was receptive. We officially began dating on the first anniversary of 9/11 and decided that date didn’t have to mean doom for all time. I bought her a bouquet of roses that lasted longer than any other flowers I’ve ever bought and everything seemed so perfect in the beginning.

To everyone else, we were inseparable and insufferable—had no sense of our PDA bothering others. We all just figured everyone else was jaded, wrong, and jealous. Still, with all the meetings of families in the burgeoning relationship, something nagged at me in the back of my mind. She was Jewish and I was a committed Christian. It seems such a ridiculous thing now, but I worried about this as far as the future was concerned—raising children, etc. She had interest in Christianity because I had interest in it and, during our time together, we visited probably over forty different churches in an attempt to find something we both liked.

She stayed in the little college town after she graduated so we could remain together. Two years later, I was nearing my graduation and something had grown stale between us that we were not acknowledging. We were together and alone, isolated from everyone else in an apartment off-campus (really the former slave quarters of a historic home) and isolated from each other in our minds. I began regretting (stupidly) that I had not dated more people during my college experience and the seven-year itch came five years too early.

I had met Malia in my first year. We were the same age and the same religion. We had crushes on each other, but nothing ever materialized…until Dawn took a trip to DC in March of 2005 and Malia and I found each other growing close. To be clear, nothing was ever consummated—even in the resulting relationship we had—but I was cheating in my mind already, so I held the burden of being the cheater once we connected.

The immediate feeling was guilt. I could not truly enjoy whatever was happening with Malia because I knew Dawn had sacrificed two years of her life and career for me, had been loyal and faithful and, even if our relationship had become a bore (which we didn’t admit until after it was over), it was as if the same person were being rent in two. I also fully expected Malia to be as good and as understanding and as warm and as helpful and as loving as Dawn. This was not to be the case. The deal I made with the Devil resulted in a halted existence. In a sense, I have felt my life ended there till this day. The rest feels like something of a non-existence.

It was the summer of 2005. Dawn and I had said goodbye as she took up with someone twenty years her senior and I was already missing what we had (even made a couple of attempts at getting her back a year later). Two could clearly be as bad as one. By the fall of that year, I was without money and stuck in Alabama because Malia told me not to come to the new life she promised me. My life was in boxes scattered about the living room, ready to move. I had my car on a vehicle to transport it to Oregon. I had a non-refundable plane ticket. Somehow, my family intervened and I was able to at least get back the non-refundable things, but a hate set up in my heart that was astonishing. Was I blaming her or myself? Who’s to say?

These two relationships impacted my life in a way that was not clear in some ways until now.

Which is worse? One or two? In my experience, both. One is most certainly the loneliest, two a close second. Do I still hold out hope there is someone for me? Not in this day and age. One can barely tell who is male or female anymore, after all. I’m too old to find someone my age to deliver children safely. I’m too young to give up entirely or, at least, that's what they tell me.

Perhaps, one day, I will be delivered from this trauma, but it has held me a mental prisoner for so long, I can't say that I will ever be free from the guilt and the image of a life I could have had and never will.