JEFFREY
Bailiwick Repertory
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The difference is the nature of the worries Rudnick raises. Instead of marital infidelity, unreciprocated love, or indecision about maintaining virginity, the characters in Jeffrey are concerned about AIDS. They’re gay guys in the Greenwich Village fast lane, where the death of young men is a fact of daily life. Fucking’s no longer fun, decides handsome young Jeffrey, whose onetime dedication to scoring (“I’m not promiscuous. That’s such an ugly word. I’m cheap”) has literally gone limp from plague paranoia. So he resolves to give up sex. But every activity he turns to for sublimation undermines his intention to eliminate sexual contact–exercise, work, masturbation, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, even religion (he’s groped by a gay priest while praying at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral). In a world where everything is permitted, the only thing that seems impossible to Jeffrey is just saying no–because, Rudnick affirms, it’s the wrong thing to say. “We’re all AIDS babies,” says Steve, the nice-guy bartender whose courtship of Jeffrey motors the plot. “I don’t want to die without being held.” Echoes of Gershwin: “Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you.”
Improbable? You bet. But the play’s feel-good finish is part of its message: in a world beset by death and disease, imagination and wish fulfillment are crucial to survival. So is laughter, which abounds in the quip-filled script, a cleverly constructed series of stand-up routines, more-or-less naturalistic domestic comedy, and Second City-type skits (including a riotous fantasy in which Jeffrey’s parents counsel him about safe sex). Rudnick’s 1993 off-Broadway hit, receiving its Chicago premiere as part of Bailiwick Repertory’s Pride Performance Series, surrounds its central conflict–Jeffrey’s retreat from life with Steve in hot pursuit–with an often hilarious caricature of gay male existence in 1990s New York. A mostly unemployed actor who earns his living as a waiter at catered events (“If you’re anyone at all you’ve ignored me, but I don’t care. I’ve tried on your fur”), Jeffrey is well situated to guide us through a community where bejeweled socialites preside over AIDS hoedowns, effeminate men in ill-fitting leather gear aspire to super-butchness, and God is seen as the white-bearded old man manipulating human marionettes–straight off the original-cast album of My Fair Lady. If Jeffrey ultimately falls short of exerting the transcendent emotional pull it strives for, its hopefulness in the face of perplexing reality is very appealing; so is Rudnick’s skill as a joke writer.
Making himself at home on the fag-apartment set of the long-running gay comedy Party (whose producers are presenting Fey Ways in a limited run), sipping from a glass of water (no liquor–doctor’s orders), and puffing on a cigarette (what’s the doctor say about that?), Hamilton Little alternately comments comically on the present and reflects on the past. The autobiographical anecdotes are the evening’s best portions: his reminiscences of his childhood in Brussels and his youth as a British prep school’s token sissy are decorated with telling details–images, sounds, odors. Material dealing with the present is less satisfying due to the author’s posture of ironic distance. Anecdotes about a weekend at Mardi Gras, a trip to New York, a visit from a former lover who’s since died of AIDS, and even his own HIV-positive status feel artificial; it’s as if Hamilton Little lived these experiences just to have something to write about. His frequent displays of effeminate snobbery at some gay men’s obsession with fitness and body building undercut his aspirations toward an Auntie Mame-style embrace of life in all its eccentric energy: if he cares so little for the gym culture, why does he spend so much time mocking it?
