‘Steve,’ ‘Dada Woof Papa Hot’ explore lives of gay fathers
Daniel Oreskes and Cameron Scoggins in a scene from the Playwrights Horizons New York premiere of "Hir," a new play by Taylor Mac, directed by Niegel Smith. Credit: Joan Marcus
This was the month I saw my first two new serious-comedies — “Steve” and “Dada Woof Papa Hot” — about middle-aged gay men with children and identity crises. I also saw an absurdist dysfunctional-family play, “Hir,” in which the daughter is changing into a son and the mother humiliates her formerly abusive husband by keeping him in a housedress.
It seems the concerns of gender-based theater are shifting again. Or at least they are at this moment. As the wounded but outlandishly ready-for-anything mother in Taylor Mac’s outrageously overwrought, gender-flexible “Hir” at Playwrights Horizons might exclaim about now, “Paradigm shift!! Paradigm shift!!”
It may be safe to consider this the next generation of what we narrowly used to think of as gay plays. For starters, none of this work is remotely about AIDS, though, of course, it remains always a part of the community memory. But these are days when a trans person can easily be the most stable character in “Hir” and when the joys and limitations of marriage — with and without children — are the focus of plays about gay men.
Encountering two plays about gay men in more-or-less conventional domesticity has been instructive. Scott Ellis has directed a fine production of Peter Parnell’s “Dada Woof Papa Hot” at the Lincoln Center Theater. Despite all the sensitivity, however, I found myself thinking that gay guys obsessing about parenthood and monogamy can be just as predictable as straight couples fretting about competitive preschools and the urge to wander.
In contrast, Mark Gerrard’s “Steve,” hilariously and compassionately directed by Cynthia Nixon at The New Group, juggles many of the same issues: gay parenting, real or suspected betrayal, nostalgia for a culture of casual sex and insecurities about still being hot.
The difference, and it’s a major one, is that Gerrard goes beyond issues by creating his own fresh style and original individuals — theater freaks and aging chorus boys who can’t help dotting conversations with lyrics and lines from show tunes.
I asked Nixon if the shared concerns in the plays are a coincidence. “No,” answered Nixon — not incidentally, the wife of Christine Marinoni and mother of three. “It’s no coincidence. But I do think it’s really interesting. Look at what gay middle-aged men have known in their lifetime. The sea change has been jaw-dropping, from being invisible or even shunned to have the pearly gates opened to them.”
She makes something of a distinction here between gay men and lesbians. “Marriage, parenthood, deciding whether the child will be a biological relative . . . all this was shut off for gay men,” she continues, making reference to the male couple — one named Steve, the other Stephen — grappling with the restriction of their home life. “Lesbians have more of a history with long-term coupling and motherhood. But gay men were never even raised with such expectations — it’s very exciting but there’s a lot of pressure.”
The subject is also explored in the Lincoln Center Theater magazine devoted to Parnell’s play about two gay married couples and one straight couple, all reacting differently to obligations and temptations.
In an insightful essay, award-winning author Andrew Solomon talks about the particular pressures of being a gay father. “If my children don’t turn out perfectly,” he writes, “it will be read by some as a comment on the inadequacy of gay parenting. It will be construed as evidence that I should never have participated in this great social experiment. Gay people are not allowed to complain about their children. If my brother’s children are imperfect, that’s because of bad luck or perhaps bad parenting; if mine are, it’s because of the alternative family into which they were born.”
Nixon, the wonderful actress recently embarking on what appears to be an equally wonderful directing career, says, “It doesn’t really seem out of step when the public sees a lesbian mother. But it’s more of a stretch for people to see two men with young children.
“A lot of heterosexual people were raised expecting to be married for life and have children.” But the debate now for gays, she says, includes “ ‘Can we do this? Let’s do this! Do we want to do this?’ These are brand new options.”
While I have her, I need to ask if the country’s new attitudes about gender fluidity have anything to do with the increasing popularity of all-women productions of Shakespeare — including Phyllida Lloyd’s riveting “Julius Caesar” in 2013 and now “Henry IV,” both at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.
As Nixon says, “People don’t have to be either/or these days. They can really be on the spectrum.” On the other hand, the actress in her says, “Frankly, women are looking around and asking ‘How come guys get 100 parts and I get four? Why don’t we take some of those for ourselves?’ Great actresses need great parts.”
So here we are, mixing up the genders in ways Shakespeare and even recent generation and fans of Bruce Jenner had never dreamed. This is theatrical, onstage and off.
