Do you ever just pterodactyl scream?
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12th March 2013A Click of the Lock Review AKA Milo gets carried away and writes a ten page paper voluntarily AKA “Shit, she’s gonna burn to death!”
(PS I hope y’all have a glass of wine and a snack because you might actually hit your next birthday before you finish reading this. It’s super long. I’m a little emotionally involved.)
If you want to compare notes or you don’t know what the play is about, the review of the first reading is here.)
So anyone who has known me for more than five minutes probably knows about this new play in progress that I’m in love with, The Click of the Lock written by Justin Sayre. The reading this time around had a lot of changes from the original reading - some good, some of them bittersweet in regards to my own feelings about the play - but I still thoroughly enjoyed this reading and seeing the play performed again. The changes that were made modified and clarified both the tone and maybe even the meaning from the original reading, focusing the audience’s attention more clearly on some things and not putting as much emphasis on others that had been more clearly expressed in the first version. Where I left the first reading feeling a sort of heavy softness, this reading was much more direct, in your face, forceful.
There were a couple of casting changes, That Cunt Lillian Russell was this time played by Sean Dugan, Mary-Mary was played by Logan Ford(who played Topsy Fallsover last reading), Topsy was read by Joe Bettles, and Daisy was not only renamed Sabine but this time was played by Chris Tyler instead of Blake Daniel.
The stage as we start out this time is completely bare except for the actor’s chairs and sсript stands, bereft of the gaudy wardrobe and dress racks (that I loved, boo) from the last reading.
It starts out the same, with That Cunt Lillian Russell and Evangeline recently evicted from their apartment because Evangeline had burnt it down. On the corner they meet Daniel, a very wealthy, very drunk young man. He is waving a gun around, shooting it straight into the air twice for amusement. Daniel is in search of something he cannot find uptown - a ‘darkness’ that he can call his own. When he meets Lillian, she immediately offers to take him to the only place left dirty enough that he can find it, a place called The Dream - a run down resort limping along as one of the last places that caters to men of ‘varying tastes’.
Our first glimpse of The Dream opens with Beth - a young and sweet queen - passed out drunk while the other girls bemoan her. Grace comes down briefly to voice concern over Beth, but Mayvene interferes(this version of Mayvene is just a tad bit meaner than the last, more in your face - as are most of the other characters.) Beth and Mayvene start a heated conversation about the fact that although she manages to find money for drinking the Mick says she owes him two week’s rent. Beth denies that she does, accusing the Mick of lying. The difference in Beth’s character is maybe one of the more striking changes from the first reading to this one. Whereas before Beth had been a quiet, almost timid character, this Beth is obviously teetering on the edge, struggling not to succumb to the darkness of the life. A prime example of this comes a bit later in the play in her talk with Daniel.
That Cunt Lillian Russell enters with Daniel in tow and he is immediately enamored with the strangeness of the place. They are met, however, with a less than enthusiastic reaction. One of my favorite comic relief moments is when Daniel says “Miss Russell” as a way of referring to That Cunt and Mayvene corrects him, telling him that it’s That Cunt Lillian Russell, or nothing.
The Mick enters. The Mick’s brother was the original owner of The Dream until he was sent to prison “For moral vagrancy, whatever that means,” so now he runs it in his brother’s stead. He demands that Cunty(I’m keeping this nickname from the original, I think Grace still uses it, but I love it so it’s sticking. “It’s her name!”) and Daniel leave, but Daniel drunkenly starts proclaiming that he must have a drink, gesturing wildly and excitedly. In the previous version he was much more subdued, although perhaps that’s as much due to the changes the actors/director/Justin have made to the characters as the actual line changes. Many of his lines are similar, just delivered in a very different manner. The Mick demands an outrageous price for their drinks in an attempt to get them to leave but Daniel says he will happily pay it and even offers to buy all of the girls a round as well. Eventually The Mick agrees to one drink for each of them, “then you go”, despite Mayvene’s protests that they should be thrown out immediately.
Once their drinks arrive, That Cunt Lillian Russell tells Daniel about the Click of the Lock, a provocative song and dance routine that The Dream is known for. He again demands that “we must have music! I will have music!” to which Cunty asks facetiously if Mayvene is the star. Mayvene smiles sweetly and replies “No, Grace is.” Earlier Grace had come down briefly when Beth was passed out(another departure from the original reading’s sсript, in which our first glimpse of her is during the Click of the Lock number). Dismayed that the entertainment is being postponed, drunk, and excited by the stories of Grace’s beauty, Daniel starts shouting for Grace obnoxiously.
That Cunt Lillian Russell(every time) jovially offers to go and get her, Mayvene chasing her all the way to Grace’s room. That Cunt slams the door of Grace’s room seconds before Mayvene gets there. Grace, who has been sitting at her cracked wardrobe mirror tells Lillian that now the only way out is to get the key from the Mick - the lock of her door jams shut whenever it is closed completely. (I’m going to go off on a tangent later about how much I love Justin’s use of metaphor and foreshadowing and just general awesomeness but for now I’ll try(I SAID TRY) to remain coherent.)
In what is becoming typical fashion for the residents of the Dream, once Grace realizes who she is speaking to she is less than pleased to see the Cunt(nope not tired of this yet give me another few scenes). Cunty tries to get Grace excited about Daniel, going on about how he’s rich and handsome and he could be Grace’s for the taking. When Grace laughs in her face(unfortunately I’ve forgotten exactly what she said, but it was something along the lines of she would rather stay in the Dream being her own person and knowing what she owns than being some rich boy’s plaything), Cunty gets angry, saying that Grace should listen to her before she gets too old to make her living fucking, how she knows more than Grace and taught her “fuck all” about fucking and who she is. Grace’s lukewarm and snarky reply is (YAY) the same as in the original: “Oh, I knew plenty about fucking before you came along.” I can’t remember if the rest of that phrase (“and if we’re really keeping score it was fucking that got me all this”) was included.
At that point, Mayvene and the Mick return with the key to Grace’s door, and the Mick ‘leads’ the Cunt outside to ‘talk’ while Mayvene helps Grace get ready for the Dream number. There is an unspoken animosity between Grace and Mayvene that is said completely through actions and looks. As Mayvene tightens Grace’s corset(at least that’s what the miming led me to believe it was, everyone was dressed in cis-street clothes) Grace gasps a bit for breath.
As Grace prepares for her number, The Mick takes the mickey(everybody laugh) out of That Cunt Lillian Russell. As in the previous version, she tries to talk sense into him - and start the next crucial step of her plan that began when she brought Daniel to the Dream. She persuades the Mick that he needs her help - and Daniel’s - to turn the Dream around from the headlong course into bankruptcy it is on. He at first refuses, saying he would be breaking an oath to his brother never to let her set foot in the establishment again, but she argues that his brother would be equally disappointed if he turned away her help and the business was gone when he finally got out of jail. (In this version it isn’t made clear, but the previous version explained that the Mick’s brother was sent to jail for “moral vagrancy, whatever that is” and Cunty was seemingly one of the key players in landing him there.)
As an aside I find that I like this version’s Cunt a lot more as a character than the last’s. Where her predecessor was similarly devious and desperate, she lacked the conniving nature that makes her such a fabulous character in this reading. Before, you could almost think that she cared about Grace, at least insofar as Grace was her prodigy. In this reading there was no mistaking that Miss That Cunt Lillian Russell was indeed only out for herself - and only interested in other people as far as she could use them to her own advantage. Her character changes are some of my favorite modifications to the play.
Once That Cunt Lillian Russell has convinced the Mick that she could be useful to him the scene cuts to back inside the resort where Mayvene, on her way down from Grace’s room, sees Evangeline in the bar as Sabine(nee Daisy) looks on. She gasps, entreating Evangeline to stay away from her, to leave. She assures that Evangeline that she does not hate her or hold any ill will to her but for what she represents and the memories she represents, she has to leave.
Sabine asks about Evangeline, and Mayvene tells the story of how Evangeline used to be the fairest and prettiest, the most ephemeral of all the fairies. She says that no one - except maybe Grace - comes close to Evangeline’s previous beauty. Evangeline “owned” the resort she presided over and was the standard to which all the other fairies set themselves to. That is, until the resort was shut down, a horrible newspaper proclaiming the club was “Sodom and Gomorrah come to the Bowery.” The closure of something that meant so much to her identity developed a darkness in Evangeline - a darkness Mayvene can see taking over Beth, and so she wants Evangeline no where near her. “Oh she still got attention, she always got attention, but there was a darkness, a strangeness about her. She’d go on and on about Sodom and Gomorrah.” Not long after the resort she had called her own was shut down, Evangeline tried to commit suicide by drinking acid - not an uncommon method, but “who knows, maybe she flinched, looked back at something” and instead of killing her, the acid burnt away the flesh of her face and mouth. “The say girls could hear the screamin’ across town, across the entire city. But nobody was listening to her by then.”
They exit, and we see where Daniel, Beth, and Mary-Mary are carrying out something less than polite conversation. Mary-Mary tells Daniel that unless he’s paying her she’s got no reason to be polite to him. Beth, however, continues to sit and talk with Daniel. In the previous reading this scene had been a more sentimental one, where Daniel and Beth bond over something closer to lonesomeness than loneliness. Beth’s character was that of a sweet, naive, almost child-like person - one who seemingly still carried hope and something of an inherent belief in the goodness of the world. This reading’s Beth has no such delusions. While she is still a dewy-eyed child compared to the others, she knows how the world inside the resort works, and she has more sarcasm and darkness in her childish remarks than sweetness. In her conversation with Daniel, Beth explains the harsh reality of being a prostitute and also why the girls dress up as they do. Daniel asks her if she wants to be a woman. Her reply is that it is more about the completeness and perfection of the image they create, putting on a show, than actually wanting to be female and being “expected to lay there and take it”.
Mayvene enters again “on stage”, proclaiming with a laugh that it’s time for everyone’s favorite part of the evening, The Lock and Key. Grace enters and is alone on stage. She starts a haunting number called “The Dream.”
———
This is where I take a break and can we for just one minute talk about Randy Harrison’s god damn voice because jesus fucking christ honestly now. (Oh come on I’m basically a randy-fan-blog like yOU WEREN’T EXPECTING ME TO LOSE IT AT SOME POINT). The entire song was sung in falsetto but every single(god damn) note was incredible. It was one of those performances where I was paying more attention to the quality of the singing than the actual words of the song(go ahead, ask me one god damn thing he actually sang, I won’t be able to tell you.) Since that’s about as coherent as I can get on this, I’m just going to leave you with the fact that after he was done and the angels had stopped coming out of his vocal chords there was a beat or two of that kind of silence where you know the audience feels as if applause is warranted but isn’t really sure if it’s appropriate to applaud with one hand while searching for your jaw on the floor with the other. Yeah. That Good. Just slow clap it out.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled trying to be coherent. (PS it was really good.)
———
Ok so what was I talking about. Right. So, the scenes in this part of the play were rearranged from the previous reading. I did my best to remember what order the scenes and dialogue goes in but…I make no promises.
After Grace exits, we cut back to Daniel and Beth. Daniel is struck dumb, and starts slowly ”Grace is..” to which Beth finishes “She is.” in a similarly awed tone. (and this is basically an accurate statement.) Someone(I believe it’s Cunty) delivers a note to Daniel from Grace inviting him up to her room. As he eagerly leaves, Beth gets angry that she is not getting anything in return for her services of keeping him company. “None of us ever had a chance at you, not with her here” and that he is just as low if not lower than any of the girls who reside in the Dream. After Daniel leaves to be with Grace, That Cunt Lillian moves in to pick at Beth about how she’ll never get the attention of men with that kind of attitude. She warns Beth that there are going to be changes around the Dream, and that if she doesn’t start pulling her own weight Lillian won’t have any qualms about having her ousted for someone(like herself) who can actually pay.
(Ok no, really, you’re just going to have to bear with me through this scene because I’m going to write everything I remember about it down because I’m not even exaggerating when I say it’s one of my favorite scenes in anything ever.)
We then follow Daniel upstairs to Grace’s room. She tells him not to close the door, explaining again about the jamming lock. She laughs at herself, joking that she only sent that note down because she has “certain ideas about how things should go between a gentleman and a lady.”
A lot of the dialogue between Grace and Daniel is the same, although it’s been juxtaposed between scenes, and there was the addition of some dialogue when Grace finds the gun that had been in Daniel’s pocket(the gun was an addition this reading) and, frightened, rounds on him. He pleads with her, assuring her it is not for her, that he would not hurt her. She doesn’t believe him, asking him who it’s for then, if not for her. Daniel shouts out “It’s for me!”
I was a little bit disappointed that some of Grace’s best one-liners were cut, particularly the scene in which we had previously first met Grace(in the first reading she had come down from her room and met Daniel in the barroom) where she pokes fun at his blustering attempts to dance around propositioning her by saying that he merely wants to ‘get to know her.’ She responds “There’s plenty of ways to know someone, I’m just tryin’ to narrow the field a bit.” Who am I kidding though I would rather the entire play be Grace and only Grace(maybe a hyperbole but, sO, YOU KNOW.)
Some of my favorite lines from their first scene this time around:
When Daniel states that they are both men, Grace asks if that’s how Daniel sees her. Recalling the conversation with Beth, he asks “Do you see yourself as a woman then?”
Still offput and somewhat amused, she replies “Are those the only two options?”
He tries again. “But surely you have a prick?” Grace laughs out loud this time.
“Is that all it takes? Ask any whore on the streets they’ll tell you a prick is the easiest thing to come by.”
Their conversation about Grace’s sheets was in this one too, in which she tries to explain that, although they both agree that the sheets are blue, she “can’t ever know that what you[Daniel] see as blue is the same as what I see, or that what I call blue is what you say it is.”
Later in the second part of their scene, they talk about how God made the entire world in darkness, and only added light later so that we could see, and wouldn’t be scared. The implication is that light puts a restriction on what we think, because we let our eyes think for us.
With a few exceptions, Daniel and Grace’s interactions in this reading felt much less private and intimate. Whereas in the first reading it felt almost uncomfortable to watch because of the intimate connection Randy and Christian put into their character’s interaction, this reading felt much more…there was not an instant nor emotionally tangible connection between the characters, at first it seemed. It fit into the overall mood of the play better, I think, especially with the vehemence with which Daniel will later betray Grace, but it was a very palatable difference.
Down in the barroom, The Mick has finally made good on his threat to throw Beth out if she can’t make rent. Despite her begging and assurance that she will get him the money tonight, even proposing pleasure as payment, he throws her out. While Mayvene yells through the door that she will work things out and that Beth only needs to go to a certain hotel, give them the money she slips under the door to her, and tell them Mayvene sent her, That Cunt Lillian Russell wastes no time in procuring Beth’s old room for herself and Evangeline.
Before the act closes we see Grace and Daniel once more briefly. Grace asks how he feels and Daniel replies ‘Nothing.’ as he did before. Grace is offended, replying “I’ve heard a lot of things, but…nothing-’ before Daniel interrupts her and assures her that nothing is that best thing he CAN feel, that it’s nothing he’s looking for. She leaves the bed, and he begs her to come back because he cannot see her. She laughs that he has already done much more than see her, and comments that she knows her entire room, even in darkness. Her mirror, her bed with the sheets that smell like lavender. “Lavender?” Daniel questions, arguing that they smell more like cat’s piss. Grace says that whatever they smell like is what she thinks Lavender should smell like, and maybe it’s only because she’s used to it but she likes the way they smell.
(“Careful, I bruise easy. Like a peach.”)
Before the act closes we see Lillian Russell(That Cunt) close the door to their room from the outside, locking both of them inside Grace’s room.
———————
Act two begins in the same way as before - Mayvene drinking at one of the tables of a redecorated and dressed up Dream while she laughs at the Mick, taunting about his lack of customers. When Daniel arrives he brushes off the Mick’s desperate attempt to kiss up to him, asking right away if Grace is there. She is out, but he goes up to her room anyway - he has bought her a present and wishes to surprise her.
As Daniel fumbles with putting the new sheets he has bought on Grace’s bed Evangeline comes in. When Grace enters Daniel hastily rushes to get her to close her eyes. He shows her the sheets - deep red silk sheets that smell of real lavender - but instead of the pleased reaction he is expecting her reaction can best be described as flattered but dismayed at best. She begs Evangeline not to get rid of her old sheets even as she tries to assure Daniel that she is happy with his gift. Upset that she does not like his gift Daniel gets angry, shouting that he is always trying to make her happy but he never seems to manage. As sweet as Daniel thinks his actions are, his reactions to Grace’s hesitance belies that he does not understand or care for her as much as he thinks he does and is more interested in what she gives him(an object to fixate emotionally on, self-esteem, self-importance) than in her as a person. He continually takes things about her character or herself and tries to make them his as he has done with the sheets. He asks her “Do you miss me when I’m gone?” and she replies “I barely have the chance.” As before, he tells her that he is madly in love with her, and asks if she loves him too. She is hesitant but responds that of what she knows of love, she thinks she feels for him as well. She hurries him away, begging that she has to get ready for that night’s show.
Daniel goes to That Cunt Lillian Russell on a Not A Social Visit to ask for her help in convincing Grace to leave with him. When he enters she appears to be holding a deck of overly large cards. As she deals them out she repeats with a wry smirk “Dead, dead, dead.” In the same fashion as the previous reading, when Daniel asks she explains that the cards are actually pictures of dead girls whom she has known. There is one who is still alive though. She is Lillian’s hope - her proof. They come to an agreement - five thousand dollars for Lillian’s help in convincing Grace to leave - just before they are interrupted by a blood curdling scream downstairs.
Beth’s body has been found - bloodied, beaten and broken. The girls Sabine, Mary-Mary, and Topsy Falls Over gather around as Mayvene tries desperately to revive her, telling her that Aunite Hester does not yet have a claim to her. (It was explained earlier in the play to Daniel and the audience that Auntie Hester was a euphemism for death, Hester street being the last street in the Bowery.) As Beth expires, the Mick frets about the blood on his new white table cloths, and that the well off Daniel has had to see such a gruesome scene. Mayvene vows revenge on That Cunt Lillian Russell for being the driving force behind Beth’s exile from the Dream.
A new - or expanded - scene in the play is the one directly after Beth’s death. As Grace is fitted for a dress by Evangeline - for her final performance in the Dream - she is haunted by memories of conversations with Beth and of the memories of Lillian leaving her at the Dream when she was younger and telling her what a wonderful place it was, and Daniel begging her to leave with him. Beth’s, Daniel’s, and Lillian’s lines overlap in a sort of spoken word song. At one point Beth speaks singularly to Grace and reveals that she cares for Grace, “and not like we’re sisters.” Grace tells her that only opposite things go together, that she should know that.
Grace is clearly distraught by the memories, and when the spoken-song ends, she asks Evangeline if she is doing the right thing. Evangeline tells her that Daniel is right when he calls her a light, that the Dream and places like it are disappearing; that soon she will have to leave regardless of if she wants to or not. She also reveals that it was her, not Lillian, who gave her the name ‘Grace’. She tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the two angels who were sent there - pure, genderless beings - and that their one task was to find one good soul. Brian delivers this monologue flawlessly again as he explains that the sin of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah was that they took these pure beings of light and destroyed them - labeled them so that they could take what they were away from them; tortured them to find out what they were purely so they would know what they could own of them.
Before Grace comes down, Mary-Mary and Topsy-Falls-Over tell Sabine about how they are using hotels to do their business - and how they are not going in drag, using male names.
Grace starts to perform her number for the last time when there is a banging on the locked door. It is Mayvene - out of drag and in men’s clothing. His voice is deeper, and he has lost any trace of femininity. Although at first he pretends to only be interested in listening to Grace’s performance, as soon as she starts he sings along drunkenly and disruptively. He then gets up and tells everyone present - the entire cast sans Beth - that he has told the ‘nice ladies who run the Salvation Army’ about how the Dream fosters sinful behavior - how it took a sweet rosy cheeked boy and broke him(he is talking about Beth) until he was left to fend for himself out on the streets and was eventually beaten to death. He tells about “the monster who was so soulless he sold the person who meant the most to him not once - but twice” referring to Lillian’s first sale of Grace to the Dream, and later to Daniel. He tells everyone quite happily that, come sunup, they will most likely have an angry mob of mothers at the door. Grace flees to her room and Daniel follows, trying to explain to her about his ‘purchase’ of her. He asks her how this is different than his paying her for sex every time he is with her.
The difference, she insists, is that he has effectively taken everything that is ‘hers’ and made it his, that she has become merely something that he has to own. At one point Grace takes Daniel’s gun from where she has kept it hidden and points it at him, but Daniel calls her bluff, knowing she would not shoot him. He tries to reason with her but as soon as he says her name she tells him angrily to never speak her name again. In retaliation, he snaps, and tells her that he will hate her for the rest of his life, that he will never forgive her for what she has done to him. There has been a fire lit somewhere inside the dream and as Daniel storms out of Grace’s room, he slams her door, trapping her inside her room(with a cliCK OF THE LOCK SEE HOW CLEVER ok no really I’m coherent). It’s unclear whether Evangeline is inside the room or not(she enters the scene at the end of Daniel’s hate schpeel) or whether she is on the other side of the door, but Grace begs her not to leave, and the two ‘stand on either side of the doorway as flames engulf them both.’ (My one real disappointment with this version was the deletion of the line ‘You are who and what you need to be.’ In the original version this is Evangeline’s last reassurance to Grace, in this version they have only a few seconds before the flames surround them both.)
The epilogue(where we see Lillian sifting through the ashes of the Dream for her crown, and met by a young sprite who is either Beth or played by the same actor who played Beth) was gone in this version. We didn’t get a chance(or no one thought of it) during the Q&a to ask what had prompted the cut. I think the play as it is now works well without it though, as Cunty was much less of a central character, and she’s such a bitch(Well, a cunt actually) that your interest in what happened to her is minimal and it would draw focus away from Grace. The play is mostly about Grace and I think it’s pretty fitting it ends with her death.
Every one of the actors who participated in this reading is flawless and I will hear none of your silly talk that they aren’t. The change in Lillian’s actor was a fantastic choice. While I loved her first portrayer, Sean Dugan who played her this time around was able to capture her Cunty-ness amazingly well, gestures and sly smiles and plotting expressions all put into place to make you uneasy with taking what she said at face value.
Brian Barefoot once again delivered all of the mysteriousness of Evangeline’s character as well as the tragedy and darkness in her to a T. Even though her overall character was much weaker it seemed in this reading(she seemed to be more background noise than an actual part of the plot - which disappointed me as she was one of my favorites the first time ‘round) when she had center stage she Had Center Stage. Maybe it’s just that, of all the characters, she underwent the least change and so felt more familiar than the others. Many of her lines were the same(she doesn’t have very many to begin with) and she had few major scene changes, so for the most part an audience that had seen her before would recognize her, much moreso than they would, say, Beth, Daniel, Lillian, or even Grace. Even the background girls(Mary-Mary, Sabine, and Topsy-Falls-Over) had some fairly large changes to their character to make them sharper in comparison.
Speaking of Beth, Cole Escola is adorable, absolutely perfect for the role of Beth, and hilarious besides. The fact that the character changed so much between this reading and the last and yet he played both completely realistically I think is a testament to his awesomeness. (So there.) He kept the innocence of Beth, but gave her just that little bit more darkness and cynicism to her character that really helped flesh her out this time around.
The changes in Daniel’s character this time around were also extremely prominent, he is in essence a different character than the first reading. Or maybe he is just clearer, his actions more transparent. Instead of the star-crossed lover who gets in over his head, you got the sense this reading that he got exactly what he was looking for in the beginning of the play. He was looking for darkness, for a name to put to all the hate he had inside of him at his feelings and himself, and he found it ultimately in his hatred of Grace. He was a much less …sympathizeable?…character this go around, many of his lines that made him seem like simply a sad young man - his chat with Beth about Lonesomeness, his explanation to Grace about his uncle’s missing leg and the phantom pains - are gone, leaving an angrier and darker man in his place.
And of course, Randy, as Grace, was flawless. (You think I say that in hyperbole, but there was so little about his performance I disliked this time around I think I’m going to cry. ((Not really, but you get the idea.)) Lies I actually might.) He used the same types of mannerisms and gestures, feminine stances and facial expressions as the last reading and effectively brought the character of Grace to life(not that any of the others failed to do this, they were all phenomenally successful in separating physically ‘masculine’ things from their characters, but come on, I’m a Randy blog, I harp on Randy# because it’s the note I like best. Shush.) Just like at the last reading I was amazed at how well he was able to bring Grace to life. That said, I felt like the character of Grace was … maybe less of a person this reading ‘round. What I mean is that, while she still felt very real and human, the way the other characters used and treated her MADE her into something less of a person, more of an idea or an object - which I feel was probably intentional. Like the angels in Evangeline’s retelling of Sodom and Gomorrah, That Cunt Lillian Russell, Daniel, and the other characters used Grace as a thing for themselves until she was something less than herself, and by the end of the play this is abundantly clear. (I’m noT GOInG to cRY.)
Though the metaphors themselves have changed(this reading the emphasis was placed much more on Grace’s door and being trapped. What Grace saw herself as and the idea of what gender means to different people took a backseat to the person - the role - that other people wanted her to be to them) the message is still extremely powerful. During the Q&A, Justin mentioned that the fairy resorts, the men who dressed and acted and to some extent lived as women, it was something of a way to be seen and recognized for who they were and what they were trying to express in a world that was constantly hellbent on not seeing them. To take back something for themselves.
He also talked about the research behind the play, the way the characters spoke, and how hard it was to find resources that talked about the fairies during the time period. One book I do remember him mentioning was ‘Gay New York’. In a more light-hearted moment in the Q&A (as he was talking about the character of Grace) he commented that of all the characters, Grace had undergone the most name changes, but when he’d thought of Grace it just seemed very right. He went on to admit that when he was first writing the end where Grace dies he was choking up a bit, realizing ‘Shit, she’s gonna burn to death!’
Another humorous little tidbit about the play that Justin revealed was that the entire reason he had started writing the play was because he wanted a character named That Cunt Lillian Russell; when he first shared the drafts with his mother her reaction was “Do you really need to call her that?”.
I think it would be redundant for me to express just how much I hope this play makes it to a full production(With Randy as Grace) since it’s basically the only thing that’s come out of my mouth for about five months, but I really really reaLLY hope we get to eventually see this as a full production.
A lot.
The end.
(PS photos here for future reference only)