Quilt–A Musical Celebration
Like the quilt, the show has a familiar, homespun feel. It’s an utterly straightforward, almost makeshift evening of theater, with a stream of characters filing past us one or two at a time, primarily to recount memories of a charismatic uncle, a misunderstood son, a longed-for lover. Some seethe with anger–at the person who died too soon, at governmental institutions that betrayed the public trust, at a society all too willing to dismiss people with AIDS. Others celebrate joyous moments spent with dear ones now departed. Most do both. Michael Stockler’s score is pure middle-of-the-road musical-theater fare; Jim Morgan’s lyrics depict individual lives in broad, easily accessible strokes: and the book–by Morgan, Merle Hubbard, and John Schak–eschews craft in favor of naive candor.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
For all its forthright earnestness, Quilt ultimately seems smug and complacent, content to espouse sentiments with which few in the audience could disagree. It wraps itself in an air of self-righteousness, continually patting itself on the back for speaking the “truth” about AIDS, when there are many truths, most much more complicated than those articulated here. In a program note director Ray Gabica (who pulled out of the production a week before its originally scheduled opening) writes, “I’d like to praise you, the audience, for your presence here tonight,” as though we’ve all done something commendable in attending the show. This kind of rhetoric merely reinforces the notion that AIDS is scandalous, dirty, and embarrassing, something nice middle-class audiences wouldn’t want to have put before them.
