Jan. 20--For a quick lesson in how much the widespread expansion and acceptance of gay marriage has changed the culture of America, one need only stop in at A Red Orchid Theatre for "Accidentally, Like a Martyr," a play set among the mostly solitary and caustic denizens of a gay bar and dealing with issues of loneliness, commitment, family and aging in the gay community.
This well-written and involving drama, penned by Grant James Varjas, is no creaking text from the early years of the movement; it is not "The Boys in the Band," now a period piece. It was only written in 2011. We begin with a bartender of the sympathetic sort, played by Dominique Worsley, and a loquacious customer, played by Troy West, who cannot quite bring himself to go home, there not being much at home. Things proceed from there, moving backward and forward in time. There are regrets from the past, affections unrequited, mistakes made, bon mots dispensed, cocktails poured, rapprochement reached.
But 2011 is not 2015. In 2011, the Defense of Marriage Act had not yet been ruled unconstitutional (and Manhattan had more room for dive bars like the one in this play). In 2015, when a gay character in a play says that to be middle-aged is to be rejected by one's own community, you find yourself wanting some debate about how the hard-won road map toward familial acceptance, the road map that has filled in over the past 36 months or so, has so radically changed that scenario. I don't mean to imply ageism has vanished, of course. Whether gay or straight, one reaches a point in life where, as some of Varjas' characters here bemoan, those who stare prefer to stare at other faces.
You could also argue that Varjas' characters -- mostly lonely souls in a sedentary, retro locale, where, as one of them remarks, "new clients are a novelty" -- were born too soon to take advantage of these seismic changes, suffering instead through a plague. And not everyone is the long-term-relationship type. It's a nod to the poignancy of some of these performances in Shade Murray's often moving and always involving production that your head goes to a place pondering the significance of the moment of our birth -- sometimes, you miss a moment by two years, not two decades.
All that said, "Accidentally, Like a Martyr" is still a warm and potent show, well worth 80 minutes of your time, thanks in large measure to the quality of the acting. The piece does not break any formative molds and it explores familiar themes but is credible throughout (2011-credible, at least), compassionate and wise. Plays like this -- full of passive, wise-cracking, seen-it-all characters played, very darkly and juicily here, by West and Doug Vickers -- always need jolts of laughter, and such jolts are provided both by Steve Haggard, playing a character who might be on his way to taking his lifelong place at this particular bar, and by Layne Manzer, as a needy but strangely likable addict who bounces off bar stools, walls and other bodies, falling into one piece of trouble after another.
Murray's immersive production is staged in what feels like an actual bar, except that it is a re-creation by the designer John Holt. The well of pain is close enough to be able to pour oneself a grasshopper, although this play articulates the timeless truth that we all reach a point where it is better to go home, especially if a loving someone waits for us there.
cjones5@tribune.com -- @ChrisJonesTrib
3 Stars
When: Through March 1
Where: A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells St.
Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Tickets: $30-$35 at 312-943-8722 or aredorchidtheatre.org
