The Intelligent HomoSexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J, Washington DC
The Intelligent
 Homosexual's Guide

To Capitalism and Socialism
With A Key To The Scriptures


November 13 - December 21, 2014
 
by Tony Kushner
directed by John Vreeke

Theatre J
Featuring:
Josh Adams, Rena Cherry Brown, Jenifer Deal,
Tim Getman, Lisa Hodsoll, Lou Liberatore,
Susan Rome, Sue Jin Song, James Whalen,
Tom Wiggin and Michael Anthony Williams



When retired longshoreman and lifelong Communist Gus summons his three adult children to their Brooklyn home to explain why he’s selling the family brownstone and ending his life, things don’t go exactly as planned. The children bring their own dramas; Pill and his husband are stumbling as an old flame resurfaces; Empty and her wife are squabbling as they await the birth of their child; and Vic is confronting long-buried truths. A deeply emotional battle over what makes life worth living from Tony, Obie, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner in a newly updated epic making its DC premiere.



          REVIEWS:
Theatre Bloom

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCThe most emotionally, politically, and socially relevant and poignant piece of evocative theatre to cross the stage in the last decade


"Director John Vreeke completes the inconceivable task of pacing the lengthy show with ease."

Theatre Bloom
Review by Amanda N. Gunther


Dreams are what sustain the human need for remaining alive. They perpetuate the notion of living until they are achieved. But what happens when one’s dream is to no longer be living? Reality implodes upon itself in a chaotic and cosmically imbalanced sense the result of which is life viewed through the lenses of comically dark reality. Everyone has problems, some more than most, and Theater J proudly presents the Washington DC area premier of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, written by Tony, Obie, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize-Winning playwright Tony Kushner. The most emotionally, politically, and socially relevant and poignant piece of evocative theatre to cross the stage in the last decade, Kushner’s work, Directed by John Vreeke, captures the quintessence of humanity and all its drama and baggage. Penned to perfection with riveting plot sparks that expose deep vaults of emotional trauma the work is exceptional and divinity to the written and performance craft.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Maintaining a simplistic set for a realist modern piece of comedic drama seems the natural approach for a play whose focus is meant to be on the characters, their developments, and their overarching storylines. Set Designer Misha Kachman finds intriguing and exceptionally clever ways to layer symbolism and artistic beauty into the stage without cluttering or crowding it. The brownstone, around which a central plot point of the show revolves, is hung suspended above the stage jutting out toward the audience. This physical representation of its weight literally hanging over the characters is balanced perfectly with the projections of the interior that appear on the back wall throughout the performance. Kachman uses these projections throughout the performance to take us from inside the family home out to the streets of Manhattan in a flash. The design work is crisp and focused; realistic but not without meaning.

 
Playwright Tony Kushner pens perfection with this new work. It is a story whose broad strokes touch on capitalism, Marxism, Communism, religion, and politics as a whole. The more intricate threads woven into the play are steeped in shades of romance, personal struggle, love, death, and raw human emotion. The way Kushner creates these hyper-realistic characters takes the audience so deeply into their lives that it never feels like watching a play. The characters have identifiable points of relativity that makes them open to the communal human experience; a highly dysfunctional family that sure has fun killing each other. Kushner’s words allow the audience to experience a great deal of hilarity at these characters plight while simultaneously exposing raw nerves that generate feelings of sympathy and empathy.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCEach of Kushner’s characters is thoroughly developed and startlingly dynamic in their existence. His work explores the balance of personal drama verses family drama, political beliefs juxtaposed against core morals and principles. The stories wind themselves around each other; an intricately woven loom of real human life— all the hilarity and drama and agony— creating a tapestry of striking beauty that plays out over the course of the evening upon the stage. Kushner has created theatrical genius with this work; a stunning play that engages the mind, captivates the heart, and touches the soul deeply.

Director John Vreeke completes the inconceivable task of pacing the lengthy show with ease. Never once does the play falter in its pacing and by the show’s end it seems impossible that nearly four hours has passed. Vreeke works through complex sections where the dialogue of various arguments overlaps severely and creates an authentic family experience in those moments. Kushner captures reality; families do not argue in segments, they often shout all at once with a great deal of topics thrown in the mix and Kushner translates this process onto the stage. Under Vreeke’s practiced direction these moments read like deliciously organized chaos; stimulating and exciting to behold even if not everything that’s happening can be absorbed all at once.
 
Vreeke has gathered an eclectic cast to fit the strange litany of characters constructed within the production. Together as a whole their performances are as fascinating and impressive as they are when they are performing one-on-one scenes. The constant fluctuating dynamic of the arguments in the performance keeps the audience on their toes; no one person ever seems truly on one side of any argument or debate; the perpetual upheaval an emotionally rewarding, albeit dizzying, experience.
 The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Everyone is given their moment to radiate in this production and those moments of radiance only serve to enhance the performance as a whole. While Adam (James Whalen) may not seem like much at first, his ties to the family are strong and his moment comes along near the end of Act II. A spastic outburst from Whalen’s drunken character in that moment extrapolates one of the major plot shockers that furthers the absurdity, hilarity, and overall dysfunction of the family. Rena Cherry Brown, playing the focused Zen Aunt Clio, has similar moments throughout the performance though in a vastly different fashion. Brown calmly delivers sarcasm with a tranquil approach to her zingers; a curious juxtaposition that would otherwise be at war with itself if not delivered in the talented hands of this particular actress. Brown’s scene-stealing moment arrives when she makes her grand exit later in the show; a moment too hilarious for words.

Hustlers and Theologians have their place in this production as well. Eli (Josh Adams) and Paul (Michael Anthony Williams) find their worlds colliding around Pill (Lou Liberatore.) Liberatore’s character is one of three children in the Marcantonio family, Paul his husband, and Eli his hustler lover that has jeopardized his marriage. Both Adams and Williams have exceptionally well-developed characters, portrayed thoroughly and uniquely by these actors. Adams is the epitome of a streetwise book-failed hustling youth; the modern slang, the nervous energy always bounding through him. Williams is much more stalwart in his physicality and his emotional unwillingness; a temper seething through him that erupts frequently.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Liberatore, as the eldest son, masters the affectations of a flamboyant gay man who is not afraid to hide who he is or what sort of trouble his current addictions have caused him in his life. Liberatore runs the gambit of emotions throughout the performance; some of his most vulnerable exposures occurring during intimate scenes with Adams. The heartfelt conversation shared with his character’s father, Gus, tugs firmly at the heartstrings and draws a tear to the eye most naturally.

Empty (Susan Rome) is a truthful spitfire, much like her hot-headed younger brother Vito (Tim Getman.) The pair are constantly at odds throughout the performance, though Rome’s character takes far longer to boil, much like a pressure cooker left on too long while Getman erupts more volcanically; sporadic and frequent. Both give intense emotional portrayals, particularly in their scenes with Gus. Getman finds his character’s vulnerability and delivers a rewarding catharsis late in the production. Rome delivers a truly exceptional performance later in the show as well; a harrowing emotional eruption that underscores all of her turmoil up to that point.
 
Gus (Tom Wiggin) is the central focal point of the play. Wiggin delivers the character with vigorous justice to a man on a mission. His vocal gravel adds to the character’s natural age; his tottering gate to creating the illusion that he has lived as long as he has. Thoroughly engulfed in the beliefs of the party and of his own history; the dynamic portrayal is phenomenal. The emotions felt are expressively intense in Wiggin’s performance; award and praise worthy for a stunning show well delivered.
 
The opportunity to see one of the most relevant pieces of theatre of the time won’t last long, and should not be missed. Theater J’s production of Kushner’s newest work is the theatre in which humankind can experience life fully and thoroughly this season.

Review by Amanda N. Gunther


DC Theatre Scene


Kushner’s sprawling, ambitious work that forces us to think once again about class struggles and the power of the people.

There is also something grand about the acting, thunderous and carved
as if these are characters written for the ages.


DC Theatre Scene
Review by Jayne Blanchard


Coworkers: How was your weekend?
Me: Great! I saw this nearly four-hour play in D.C. about labor unions and the American Communist Party!
Coworkers: [Sounds of crickets chirping]

To put it mildly, Tony Kushner’s gargantuan, garrulous play The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures is not everybody’s cup of borscht.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCYou have to love words, luxurious skeins of verbiage that stretch out like an endless Persian carpet, metaphoric flights of fancy that form like fat pearls in the actors’ mouths, speeches so labyrinthine that the master of the convoluted sentence—William Faulkner—would doff his trilby with a whistle and concede “Tony, you win!”

You think August Wilson or George Bernard Shaw possess the gift of gab? Hah! They’re a Pinter pause compared to Kushner. And he’s on a roll here, in a zany and brainy grand opera of a play that tackles elder suicide, the labor movement, socialism, communism, Christian Science, the Shining Path, thorny relationships, academia, the gentrification of Brooklyn, homosexuality, family dynamics and the selling out of ideals.

Other than being a word slut, to drink in the experience of this play, you also need to be interested in things no one cares about anymore—even the people involved. Things like the working class, unions, living by an ideology. In a society where only money has meaning and means everything, stuff like a hard day’s work for honest pay, protecting the worker or basing your life on a principle seems crazily out of touch with current reality.

Kushner brings that time back to life in a messy, messianic work set in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn in 2007—the Bush years, right before the collapse of the real estate bubble.

Gus Marcantonio (Tom Wiggin, in a sinewy, staggering performance ), a retired longshoreman, labor leader and card-carrying member of the Communist party, has called a meeting at the brownstone house that has been in the family since the turn of the century—the 20th century. Production designer Misha Kachman suggests the iconic multi-story Brooklyn brownstone with a towering fireplace, built-in bookcases that float through the set like something out of Alice in Wonderland and a front stoop where the characters go to shoot the breeze and cool off.The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC

Gus is announcing his imminent suicide to his children: Maria Teresa (Susan Rome), nicknamed “Empty” after her initials, a labor lawyer as impassioned and rabble-rousing as her Pop; Pill (Lou Liberatore), a high school history teacher drawn to risky sexual encounters; and Vito (Tim Getman), the youngest and the only avowed capitalist of the group.

They don’t take it well, naturally, and rage, rage against the dying of the light. But Gus insists he’s finished with life and has the beginning of Alzheimer’s. More than that, Gus feels that what he believed in, what he dedicated his life to, isn’t valued anymore and therefore, he’s about as relevant as an old Bolshevik muttering in his tea about the good old days of 1917.

He’s demoralized by what he sees—the shrinking of the working class and the rise of manipulators of private equity—and he wants out.

It’s not so cut-and-dried for Gus’ children. They have complicated lives and complicated feelings towards their father. It’s like a “des, dems and dos” variation on The Cherry Orchard with a modern sensibility toward sexuality. Empty swears she’s a lesbian but enjoys loud sex with her ex-husband Adam (James Whalen) while awaiting the birth of her child with partner Maeve (Lisa Hodsoll), who just happens to have been impregnated with Vito’s sperm.

Pill is married to theology professor Paul (Michael Anthony Williams), but fooling around with a quirky, seductive hustler Eli (Josh Adams), and admits that he prefers paying for sex and casual encounters to commitment.

And did we mention Clio (Rena Cherry Brown), Gus’ sister, a woman of few—but well-chosen—words who is an ex-nun who ran off to join the Shining Path?

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCIn this talkier version of ‘Night Mother, the clan tries to talk Gus out of suicide while going off on tangents about their own problems. Echoes of Odets, Miller and Shaw are seen in the characters’ penchant for lofty ideological debate in a humble, kitchen-sink setting. This all adds texture but seems rather weird that everyone’s so verbose and prone to digression in the midst of what appears to be an emergency—Dad’s gonna kill himself, for heaven’s sake. Shut your pie hole.

The conversations overlap, vie for supremacy and build to cacophonous crescendos like an opera finale, a rich counterpoint to the working stiff ethos of the play. There is also something grand about the acting, thunderous and carved as if these are characters written for the ages.

Susan Rome seems like she just stepped out of a Thomas Hart Benton mural, so sharply etched, firm and fierce is her portrayal of Daddy’s girl Empty. Tim Getman is all bluff and brio as the misunderstood baby of the family, Vito, while Lou Liberatore is a seething mass of contradictions as the not-grown up middle-aged man Pill. Josh Adams never fails to give an unexpected twist to his lines and depiction of the tried-and-true role of the pretty, young gay hustler Eli. Similarly, Rena Cherry Brown’s unusual line readings and timing make sister Clio both a model of serenity and an unexpected source of humor.
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
As the family patriarch, Tom Wiggin gives a staggering performance as a lifelong tough guy and leftie who bears the weight of his realization that the labor movement didn’t fail him but the other way around. His Gus is a hero in the truest sense—strong, deeply flawed, and a man of his word.

Speaking of words, there are acres of them in The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide and references to everything from Garibaldi to the Desert Fathers. There’s no way you can keep up with Kushner’s opulent mind and you’re probably not supposed to—just let the language wash over you.

But you still may wonder—what does it all mean? Could be a lot of delectably perfumed hot air, for all we know. That doesn’t necessarily detract from your enjoyment of Kushner’s sprawling, ambitious work that forces us to think once again about class struggles and the power of the people.


Review by Jayne Blanchard



The Washington Post

Kushner’s ‘Guide’: Long, gabby and intelligent

The Washington Post
Review by Peter Marks


The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCIt’s been perilously gusty this week outside the confines of Theater J — and within. A great torrent of words is whooshing across the company’s stage, courtesy of Tony Kushner and his garrulous, passionate, digressive, erudite, funny, caustic, unwieldy, instructive, didactic and sharp-elbowed comedy-drama, with its space-suck of a title.
 
Like the play itself, its name — “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” — chafes against the ceiling of our need for information. There’s a lot to process in this 3 1/2 -hour play, focused mostly on the death wish of a retired Brooklyn longshoreman and union organizer, an idealist who has become terminally disenchanted with the state of everything: the labor movement, the socialist left, the “system,” his three fallible grown children.
 
And yet, this being Kushner, American theater’s foremost opus-weaver (“Angels in America,” “Homebody/Kabul”), the play is engaging in a sprawling, untamed way — a messy mosaic, encrusted with gems; not his strongest piece, but as is always the case with this dramatist, a lively play packed with reasons to listen, even when it’s not easy-listenin’. At times, in fact, in director John Vreeke’s polished production, the arguing becomes so intense that it erupts all over the stage at once, with characters shouting at one another in competing clusters — another combustible Babel.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCDistinguishing the voices in these interludes is sometimes as challenging for an audience member in the Goldman Theater as the larger task Kushner sets for us, understanding where this “Guide” is meant to take us. The battles across emotional, ideological, even theological lines — two of the 11 characters are religious scholars — rage in every direction, to an arcane extreme. How many plays, after all, include a consideration of the biblical issue of dispensationalism?

For all the angry, elevated cross-talk, however, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” returns over and over to one organizing and digestible theme, the fissures in the family of the old longshoreman, Gus Marcantonio (the ruggedly empathetic Tom Wiggin), and more specifically the question of why, in the face of the family’s anguish, he is determined to kill himself.
 
Kushner gives Gus a speech, well more than three hours into the play, in which he finally spells out his rationale for checking out. It’s a bit of a letdown, a spleen-venting that you imagine could easily have come way earlier and got us all home at a decent hour. Then again, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” attempts to embody as well as illuminate a paralysis that is overtaking Gus’s children and the society at large, a slow-moving, money-fed decay that is neutralizing dissent, neutering the environment and smothering the working class.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCWhat alerts everyone to Gus’s seriousness about suicide — he has slashed his wrists once before — is that he’s put up for sale the brownstone that’s been in the family for generations. (The play is set in 2007, on the cusp of the country’s close-to-apocalyptic financial meltdown.) Gus’s kids, nursing their own psychic wounds, view the impending transaction not as a personal windfall but as a cataclysmic surrender: PierLuigi, or “Pill,” played by the excellent Lou Liberatore, is a history teacher married to theologist Paul (Michael Anthony Williams) but in love with sensitive young hustler Eli (Josh Adams); Maria Teresa, or “Empty,” portrayed by the equally terrific Susan Rome, is a nurse-turned-labor-lawyer who has left Adam (James Whalen) for the now-pregnant Maeve (Lisa Hodsoll); and Vito (Getman, in another impressive turn), a contractor married to Sooze (Sue Jin Song) and who has donated his sperm to Maeve and Empty.
 
Got all that? For good measure, Gus has invited to stay with him his sister Clio (Rena Cherry Brown), a former nun whose political radicalism led her to Peru and an absorption into the Maoists of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCThe gallery of characters allows Kushner a Chekhovian varnish: Rome’s Empty even reminds the others, in imitation of a Chekhov heroine, that it is important that they keep on working. And the marathon length of the play gives many of the actors their own opportunities to forge shining paths: Hodsoll is particularly good as the loud and histrionic Maeve; Brown makes for a fine, vinegary Clio; and Adams persuasively conveys the jumble of conflicting impulses that are Eli, a Yale alum who graduates to turning tricks.
 
It’s easy enough to point out that there’s material here for at least three plays: the concerns of “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” cover everything from labor-union featherbedding to Catholic mendicant orders to the state of gay marriage. But connecting all the narrative dots might not be the best use of one’s first exposure to the play. Better to focus your attention on Gus, who in Wiggin’s grounded and searching performance, provides the evening with a useful touchstone. Like the play, he talks and talks but is rarely dull.

Review by Peter Marks



DC Metro Theatre Arts

This show is a surfeit of surprise and substance, of significance and delight, of density and shimmering wit. And the long and the short of it is…don’t miss it.

"All the stage arts perfectly serve Kushner’s extraordinary script and Vreeke’s focused conception."

DC Metro Theatre Arts
Review by John Stoltenberg


The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCKushner’s story centers on an Italian-American family in Brooklyn with radical intellection in its blood. It’s one of those homes where talk overlaps constantly and opinions ping-pong and agile vocabularies are obligatory; and though other people come and go, their brains all seem networked to the same cognitive cloud. That, of course, would be the prodigious mind of Kushner. The upshot is that drop-in visitors such as ourselves, inquisitive theatergoers, cannot help but be amused and amazed. Even if we don’t catch it all, there’s more than plenty to entertain us. And as we listen in on the brilliant badinage, our own mental faculties are quickened.
 
The genius of Kushner’s writing in The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… is that it activates in its audience the very attentiveness it wants and needs us to have in order to tune in to what it says and means—a mentally transformative experience unlike most any other in live theater. What lies in store for the rapt receiver is a story with such a broadband of resonance you’d have to combine Chekhov and Shaw with a soupçon of Simon to come up with anything close.
 

On one level iHo centers on Gus, the widowed 72-year-old father of two sons, one gay and one straight, and a daughter, who is divorced from a man and in a lesbian relationship. Gus owns the $4 million brownstone where much of the play takes place. Gus has announced his intention to commit suicide, and his three children, who have their own dramas going on, are determined to change his mind. We know Gus means business because he’s already made a serious attempt. A former longshoreman and labor union organizer, he has become disillusioned with life, not in a morose and depressed way but in an insightful and astute way: The anticapitalist revolution he wanted to happen, and worked so hard to help incite, has not come to pass. Worse, he says, the world is dying because money has become truth.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCThere’s a bit of an implausibility about Gus: If he’s so smart, why can’t he think himself out of checking out? Well, just because, really. Besides, in Tom Wiggin’s compelling and persuasive performance, Gus’s idée fix propels interconnecting storylines that are as lively and fun to follow as they are dead serious.
 
 The big ideas packed into iHo are about money, class, labor, property, the worth of work, the value of a human life—all loaded concepts in socialist and anticapitalist discourse—as well as about faith, the soul, God, and other spiritual concepts from religious traditions and theological study. Though Kushner’s full title seems an almost mocking amalgam of Marxist and religious frames of thought, it turns out he really does use both languages to dramatize and express his themes. Plus he throws in a lot of laughs and sex.
 

When the play begins, Gus’s gay son, known as Pill (the engagingly earnest Lou Liberatore), is on the phone with a hot but dim hustler, Eli (the appealingly ardent Josh Adams). We learn there’s an intense connection of eroticism and commerce between them, not to mention multiple betrayals—including of Pill’s husband, Paul—and as their complex sex-for-sale relationship evolves over the course of the play, Kushner glosses it with some of the play’s most eyeopening observations about the deleterious effect of money on human life and relations.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Similarly Kushner extracts from the narrative of Gus’s suicide planning a potent metaphor for the anathema of property. Unbeknownst to his kids, Gus has found a buyer for the brownstone. He intends to sell it before he kills himself so the money can be divided among the siblings, a notion that distresses and appalls them. The house hangs over their lives not only figuratively; Production Designer Misha Kachman has cleverly suspended over the stage a red brick brownstone facade that does so literally.
 
Money, property, and labor are also viewed through Kushner’s witty lens in the subplot of Gus’ daughter, called Empty (the energetic Susan Rome), whose very pregnant same-sex partner, Maeve (the droll Lisa Hodsoll), is about to give birth to the child they planned. Empty and Maeve’s relationship is on the rocks, however, again with multiple betrayals. Empty has sex with her ex, Adam (the slick James Whalen), a real estate agent who brokered the sale of the brownstone. The sperm for the baby did not come from a bank as planned because Pill borrowed the money they’d saved up to do that and spent it all on his young hustler. So Maeve used sperm from Empty and Pill’s brother, Vito (the stolid Tim Getman), making her pregnant with her own nephew but locking the baby into an inheritance claim. Sooze (the flighty Sue Jin Song), Vic’s wife, shows up. When she learns Vic delivered the semen to Maeve not as a hand job but in situ, she freaks. Thus does Kushner hilariously and provocatively weight Maeve’s impending labor with impropriety and property, monkeying around and money.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Meanwhile three of the characters extemporize in religious language. Paul (Michael Anthony Williams) is a lecturer in theology, Maeve is a doctor of theology, and Gus’s sister, Zeeko (Rena Cherry Brown), is a former nun. And a character who arrives late in the play, Shelle (Jenifer Belle Deal), brings a loving, personal, and profoundly moving dimension to all the talk of the value of life.
 

All the stage arts perfectly serve Kushner’s extraordinary script and Vreeke’s focused conception. We are ushered into the philosophical/political landscape of the play by a fascinating montage of images and audio evoking U.S. and European political protest, demonstrations, communist and socialist leaders and mass actions—all by Projections Designer Jared Mezzocchi and Composer/Sound Designer Eric Shimelonis. Similar effects, including by Lighting Designer Dan Covey, mark the play’s passage in time and place and bracket the play’s scenes. While Kachman has framed the realistically furnished playing areas with dramatic abstraction—a wide bookcase suspended askew, a vast cracked wall upstage, that hovering building facade—Costume Designer Ivania Stack has given the characters an unobtrusive commonality of credibility.
 
Any “intelligent theatergoer’s guide” to The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… ought to advise that there’s too much relational, emotional, and ideational content here to be appreciated and assimilated in one sitting. And the play lets you know right away that’s perfectly fine. There’s a lot of scintillating and quippy philosophizing, and the play moves at a brisk clip, but every plot point is unmissable and every character arc unmistakable. Whether you take a deep breath and call it The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures or whether you breezily call it iHo, this show is a surfeit of surprise and substance, of significance and delight, of density and shimmering wit. And the long and the short of it is…don’t miss it.

Review by John Stoltenberg




BroadwayWorld.com

Theatre J's Wild, Rollicking INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE

"Director John Vreeke has pulled off an incredible artistic feat"


BroadwayWorld.com
Review by Andrew White


It's a given that whenever Tony Kushner touches down on the DC stage, it's a major cultural event. But the current production of The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures comes complete with quirks and brainy asides that can leave audiences miles behind, grasping for meaning. This being an epic affair, clocking in at over 3 ½ hours, eventually we simply give up and let the characters live their lives, untouched and untouchable. But that's when the magic starts.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCAlthough Kushner has proven so masterful at creating intricate but solidly-constructed plots-and who can forget his work on the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln-it would appear that he has ditched plot and lines of development completely. I get the impression that his research for Intelligent Homosexual's Guide consisted of reading James Joyce's impenetrable Finnegan's Wake while listening to a Mozart opera or two. Joyce's last novel is notorious for its idiosyncratic references to a bewildering variety of historic and contemporary phenomena (not too long ago, you could get tenure just trying to explain 20 pages of it), while Mozart popularized the trick of having his characters singing diverse lyrics and melodies simultaneously, constantly weaving around each other.
 
The premise for this exercise in madness is straightforward enough: Gus, a long-retired longshoreman, union organizer and unrepentant Communist, is contemplating suicide-ostensibly because his memory is starting to fail him, which he takes to be a sign of Alzheimer's. Over the course of the play, however, it becomes obvious that there are many other reasons why suicide might be a preferable option; the disintegration of Communism into consumerism, the disintegration of each of his children's lives into chaos and infidelity, and then there's that insanely high offer for his family home, a brownstone, a sum that even jaded DC audiences might find excessive. The prospect of leaving that much money to his kids, before the market tanks (the play is set in 2007) is a huge temptation. The dialogue is sprinkled liberally with Kushner's obsessions du jour; theology, Communism, G. B. Shaw, lesbian sex, artificial insemination, and drywall repair to name just a few.
 The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Director John Vreeke has pulled off an incredible artistic feat, honing his ensemble into a small chamber orchestra because that is what Kushner requires; a cast capable of performing precision-timed simultaneous dialogues while pausing just long enough for a lone interjection to bring down the house with laughter. Tom Wiggin anchors the proceedings as a gruff, plainspoken patriarch Gus; in spite of his resolve to die soon, he ends up being the calm at the center of the storm that is his family. As his sister Zeeko, Rena Cherry Brown shares his sanguine attitude towards everyone else's troubles; in a typical move, Kushner gives Zeeko a biography that begins in a Carmelite convent, proceeds directly to the Shining Path, and we even see her leafing through the works of Mary Baker Eddy (whose book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures gets a nod in the play's title). Ms. Brown, always a graceful presence, bears Zeeko's world-weariness lightly, and glows throughout.
 
The children are not necessarily given equal prominence, but there are some excellent performances here as well: Lou Liberatore is a standout as Pill, Gus's gay son, who is clearly at a crossroads in his personal life; his panic, mingled with his desire to keep his father alive, are positively riveting. As his husband Paul, Michael Anthony Williams provides an element of gravitas and conscience that is the Ying to Pill's Yang (Paul being a theology professor, perhaps this comes with the territory). Pill's sister Empty-the nicknames are based on their Italian names, by the way-is a chip off the old block, having followed her father Gus into labor advocacy as a lawyer, and Susan Rome nails this role, which is often the most compelling. Rounding out the house is Vic or "V", Gus's straight son and unlike everyone else an actual working man, whose drywall skills come in especially handy during the show. Tim Getman does a good job with a role that is somewhat underwritten, although his character's secrets make for some real complications.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCThere is, of course, collateral damage in the form of spouses and lovers, and perhaps the most memorable here are Josh Adams as Eli, a Hustler (and a Yalie) who is the apple of Pilll's eye and Lisa Hodsoll as Maeve, Empty's wife and the expectant mother of their first baby. (Now, there hangs a tall tale ...). James Whalen is an appropriately hunky Adam, Empty's ex-husband, and Jenifer Belle Deal gives a gentle and disturbing performance as Michelle, a widow who brings Gus his suicide kit.
 
Misha Kachman has created an appropriately surreal set, complete with a 2-story wall, with brick and windows, suspended over the stage and a distressed wall on which period films are projected. Jared Mezzocchi's montage of Cold War imagery, from pop stars to Stalin, helps to create the appropriate mixture of nostalgia and confusion that fits the script to a "t".
 
Given the fact that the dialogue is all over the map, it is tempting to say that Kushner is beginning to experiment with a new style he hasn't quite found yet. The play works brilliantly as a performance piece, and this ensemble is nearly perfect; but his decision to leave things up in the air (per Kachman's design) seems to indicate that he himself is on the cusp of something new. Normally I'm not one to kibitz, but one avenue he might try is to ditch his constant recourse to the crotch and its foibles as a plot device. Marital Infidelity and explicit references to various sex acts may get a rise out of some theatregoers, but frankly it's old hat. And as Gus himself says when Empty starts to talk dirty, you trivialize yourself when you do it.

Review by Andrew White




MD Theatre Guide

"There’s something timeless about the work of Kushner, brought to us in this stirring production, creating something that will stay with us."

"Credit director John Vreeke for keeping this triple-trailer semi truck on course. Good thing for him he’s working with a first class cast."

Review by Roger Catlin
MD Theatre Guide


When the Theater J production of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures still hadn’t begun a little after its posted starting time one night this week, I had a dark thought: Kushner’s backstage rewriting it again!
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCThat was practically the situation when the mammoth work — his most recent for the stage — first premiered at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 2011. Kushner is a brainy, passionate and very funny writer whose “Angels in America” had earned him a Pulitzer and a reputation. And here he seemed to be throwing every last idea he had into a 3 1/2 hour production.
 
Kushner was in D.C. for rehearsals of its D.C. premiere — and only its fourth staging overall. But by now the work, while still unpublished, has attained a heft and solidity of a major theatrical event. Those worried about its length (or troublesome course up to now) should know that it needs the time for all of the humor, pain, unexpected pathos, and history of the demise of the American labor movement he wants to include.

Kushner has so much to say about all of these things that there are points where the dialogue literally overlaps — with two or three conversations happening simultaneously. Crazy, for theater; but lifelike, you have to admit.
 
And by the time the second intermission comes, about the time when people would usually be shuffling to the parking lot, the audience is so riveted at what’s going on, they wouldn’t think of leaving, let alone dashing to the restroom, lest they miss its resumption.
 The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Kushner spends a lot of time these days on screenplays and a series for HBO, which is a shame since iHo, as he likes to call it, is so full of theatrical mastery — of characters, of tension, of uproarious humor and keen wit, of unexpected visual spectacle and a mysterious suitcase; of life and death and love and the panorama of ideas, history and thought, presented by a writer who refuses to talk down to his audience (or even look at his watch as the pages pile up).
 
Most of all, Kushner is doing what the central character exclaims at a key moment: “I’m still thinking.”

 
And what a wonderful thing that is.
 
For all of that, there are still traces of what an unfinished thing it must have been in its premiere. “Any good theater in Minneapolis?” is the first line, a throwaway reference to the initial high anticipation for the work.
 
Another bit about cell phones in theaters has rarely been so strongly addressed in the body of a play, only to pay off hilariously later.

Credit director John Vreeke for keeping this triple-trailer semi truck on course. Good thing for him he’s working with a first class cast.
 
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCTom Wiggin brings a growling contentiousness as Gus, a still quite vital 72-year-old former longshoreman and union organizer, whose attempts at suicide has brought the concern of his three adult children, each of whom have their own issues.
 
Gus is a throwback not just because he’s a labor guy and former party member; he’s a working class scholar, busying himself by translating Horace.
 
Susan Rome is very good as the daughter who gave up a medical career for socially engaged one; her partner (Lisa Hodsoll) is a doctor of theology who is about to give birth.
 
Lou Liberatore is a high school teacher with a husband (and former theology teacher of the above partner) (Michael Anthony Williams), caught up in a relationship with a young hustler (Josh Adams).
 
Tom Getman plays the straight offspring, a contractor with anger issues and a wife (Sue Jin Song) who tries to smooth things over.
 
In the background (at least in the start) is Gus’ sister, played by Rena Cherry Brown, with a sour look on her face, the perfect deadpan for the action all around her. Though she’s had a radical background as well, she has lately turned to Mary Baker Eddy (who provides the second half of the title; the first is from the title of a political tract by George Bernard Shaw).
 The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Jennifer Belle Deal has a startling role late in the play, as someone who dryly explains the methods of suicide — a scene as tense and serious as others are boisterous and chaotic – Marxist more in the sense of the Brothers than the revolutionary philosopher.
 
The action largely takes place inside the family brownstone in Brooklyn, which may or may not be sold if Gus does the deed. The daughter’s ex (James Whalen), a real estate lawyer, happens to live in the basement and is ready to help with any sale.
 
Misha Kachman’s set is a good place to spend a few hours; its overstuffed bookcase denotes a life of reading (though it slants right instead of left). The cracks in the walls above the fireplace would denote fissures in the family as well, if they don’t crack open further when the angry son throws the bust of Italian patriot Garibaldi into it. Her brownstone facade floating ominously above them may be something you don’t notice until two hours in because of all the action on stage.
 
The projections and sound of Jared Mezzocchi and Eric Shimelonis, respectively, perfectly frame the action and time.
 
But there’s something timeless about the work of Kushner, brought to us in this stirring production, creating something that will stay with us.


Review by Roger Catlin


The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC

        The Images:

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide
To Capitalism and Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures
Photo credits: C. Stanley Photography
(Click on photo to enlarge)

Josh Adams-Lou Liberatore
Tom Wiggin-Susan Rome
Michael Anthony Williams-Josh Adams-Lou Liberatore
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Lou Liberatore-Josh Adams
Lou Liberatore-Josh Adams
Lisa Hodsoll-Rena Cherry Brown-Susan Rome-Tom Wiggin
Tom Wiggin-Tim Getman
Tom Wiggin-Susan Rome
Tom Wiggin-Susan Rome
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
Lou Liberatore-Rena Cherry Brown-Tim Getman-Susan Rome-Tom Wiggin
Lou Liberatore-Rena Cherry Brown-Tim Getman-Susan Rome-Tom Wiggin
Tim Getman-Rena Cherry Brown-Tom Wiggin-Lou Liberatore-Susan Rome
Rena Cherry Brown-Tom Wiggin-Lou Liberatore-Susan Rome-Tim Getman
James Whalen-Susan Rome
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC


Interview:
DC Theatre Scene

John Vreeke on directing Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…

Interview by Alan Katz
DC Theatre Scene

When I first saw Theatre J’s season announcement, I knew I wanted to talk with John Vreeke, director of Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, which is having its area premiere at Theatre J. Luckily for us, he was able to pull away from rehearsals for this 3.5 hour play to discuss the production’s scale and how it fits into the DC theatre scene.

Alan Katz: First Question, who are you?

John VreekeJohn Vreeke: I think the best way to find out who I am is to check out my website and see the kind of work I have done in DC over the past 15 years. It’s quite a bit. And I direct plays, I guess that’s why you’re talking to me. Beyond that, I live with my partner in Seattle, we’ve lived in West Seattle since 1988 off and on, we own our house there. We moved to DC in 2000, stayed for almost 10 years, then for a variety of reasons we moved back. We love to explore the mountains, hike a lot and bike a lot. I don’t do any theater in Seattle (not by choice!). But I like what I do here; as long as these great Artistic Directors around DC keep putting up with me, I’m glad to keep coming back and directing some great plays.

AK: You’re doing that right now with Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide [I-Ho]. What’s your journey with that play been like?

JV: I first read the play about a year and a half ago. Its a difficult script to read, since a large percentage of the script is written in overlaps. Two or three conversations might be happening in a room concurrently. Just keeping track of who is talking to who, in the way that Tony [Kushner, author of the play] scored this text, but once you figure out what his instructions are, you can then slowly figure out what’s going on.

I loved it from beginning to end when I first read it. I liked the central character’s situation. It’s a complex story, but it’s a great story. I had directed Homebody/Kabul about 10 years ago, and I came to appreciate and love the brilliance of Tony Kushner’s language. That was very true for this play as well. The journey for directing has been a little tense. The play is long, almost 4 hours long, very long. Just the sheer size of it is intimidating. Ari [Roth] and Theater J are taking a giant chance on a play that most companies with similar resources won’t touch because of how big it is, how expensive it is, and the size of the cast (11). Even the larger regional theaters think twice about it. Ari has given us a little more time than normal to rehearse.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCSo the journey started with the actors about a month before I came out. I spent a lot of time putting together some thoughts about how to approach the language, their character, how to prepare. Pleading with them to do a lot of homework before I arrived. Which they did! Then when we went to work in the rehearsal room, since I had requested a strong assistant, we had double rehearsals. We had actors working with me and actors working with my assistant at the same time. That was 2-3 weeks where we really plowed this script into our brains. It was exhausting. But it has been rewarding, even a lot of fun. Sometimes luck is on your side when you cast a show. Every single one of the 11 actors is hugely motivated, smart as can be, very suited to their role, very committed, and very un-fussy. Not a diva in the bunch.

AK: With the play being so large and complex, how does that affect your vision for the play?

JV: The other three productions of I-Ho that have happened over a relatively long time (since 2008). Each of them were done in theaters that had significantly larger spaces than Theater J. Stages that have fly space, contraptions, elevator lifts where sets come in and out. The play takes place in a brownstone in Queens (and a few other locations), but within that brownstone, it takes place in the basement apartment, in the main room in the upstairs room, stair landing, on the outdoor stoop. So many places. So with these theaters that had greater resources, since the play is Tony Kushner’s homage to playwrights like Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets (and O’Neill and Williams), it’s been considered to be a reality-based drama, so they make reality-based scenery. And that’s fine.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCWhen I read it and saw it at Berkeley [Repertory Theater], I thought, “Even if I had the ability to do all these big, big sets that float in and out, which is fun to watch and impressive, I don’t think I would do it. I think the play is all about the people.” I wanted to find something that was less real but more evocative. So my buddy, Micha Kachman, a professor who does a lot of design, we brought him in on the process to come up with the great solution for Theater J. He achieved something that was more sculptural and evocative. So when you asked about the vision for the play, many times it has to do with what your resources are. Sometimes being pragmatic about that determines the parameters. This time I think that it brought us to some really interesting decisions.

I’ve studied Tony Kushner and talked to him. He said once in an interview, “Theatre’s not real. Audiences are not easily fooled. In fact, they’re never fooled. In fact, the audience is in the theater watching Angels in America, they know that woman is in a harness and there’s ropes that are flying her around. There’s no real illusion there.” I felt the same way about I-Ho. I think that’s one of the things theater does best. If you want to make it feel real, go make a movie. I find the fact that we’re approaching it from a more expressionistic place much more interesting. That’s my own aesthetic, too.

AK: I know this will be tough for such a big production, but could you boil down the story for me?

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCJV: Gus, who is 72 in 2007, is and has been a lifelong communist. He believes strongly that the world has the potential to be a much better world. But that world is stuck in capitalism, trapped, and money is god, that’s a very bad thing. At 72, he believes he’s losing his memory, but he also knows he is no longer able to have an influence on the world. He’s spent his whole life in service to the Communist Party USA, to union organizing, to fighting for better wages. He was a longshoreman. He has 3 offspring.

So, we come to the point in his life where he has decided that, in a painless way, he wants to commit suicide. Sell his house and give the money to his kids. The three kids show up, and they ain’t having none of it! The play is about how he is trying to convince them to accept his decision to take his own life. It gets very complicated. His oldest son is gay, with a history of a relationship with a young hustler that he runs up to. His second child, his daughter who is most like him, has a relationship with a woman who is pregnant. But also has a relationship with the guy who lives in the basement, her ex husband. The third child, a son, is married with two kids. But he has his own issues with his father’s leanings in terms of his views on the world. All of this comes out. It’s a play about a father convincing his children about how important it is for them to not only accept his suicide, but support him in it.

AK: When you think about doing this play in DC, in this specific setting, will audiences here have a special relationship with this play?

JV: Audiences in DC are smart and particularly in Theater J because Ari Roth has a mission to do plays that are socially and politically challenging. DC audiences have a focus on politics. I think its great that we’re talking about the Communist Party USA. One of the historical characters that had a great impact on Gus is a relative of his, Vito Marcantonio, he was actually a representative in the House, and he had support from the Communist Party. He was very loved in his district because he fought for the poor.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DCAK: Is that something we’re losing today?

JV: Oh, God, yes, ask Bernie Sanders. Now that the pendulum has swung back (in the control of the Senate) the questions loom even larger. People say that the economy is growing. Okay, but growing for whom? For a very tiny percent of the population. Two thirds of the population make less money than they did ten years ago. Of course this play takes place in 2007, just before the big bust, but his despair would be the same today, if not more.

I don’t think this country cares about or wants to takes care of the poor. It doesn’t want to create a society where everybody is taken care of. Where labor is paid what its worth, and owns what it makes. Labor doesn’t own what it makes; labor doesn’t own anything. Even fighting for a crummy $10 minimum wage, which is still not enough, we can’t even get. This play talks about those specifics. So DC audiences will sit up and notice that. Frankly, most of the audiences are generally liberal-minded thinkers. I don’t know if there are lots of conservatives who go to theater. That might be a generalization, but it seems like that.

AK: Is there a problem of preaching to the choir in that context?

JV: That’s a good point. That’s always a danger. I don’t think this play is going to make anybody become a communist. I do think it will get people talking about end-of-life issues, about taking a really hard look at the politics of our country. Asking people to stop burying their head in the sand and look at it. Change is difficult, but I think something has to change. I don’t see how this country can sustain itself on a class of people who own everything and then everyone. Gus is a revolutionary. I don’t see that happening in my lifetime, but that’d be cool to see.

AK: What would you say to an audience member who is used to a 90 minute play with no intermission and is thinking about buying a ticket to I-Ho, but is intimidated by the length?

JV: I’d say give it a shot. The play is dense and rich. Back in the day, plays used to regularly be 3 hours with two intermissions. But I’ve directed a number of those 90 minute plays, believe me, and there’s so much more you can say with more time. It’s like a full meal instead of just a quick appetizer.
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC
AK: When you approach this play, what do you see of yourself in it?

JV: A lot. I see my relationship with my father. I see my relationship with my partner of 38 years, I see that in the issues that the homosexual son is having. As an older gay man, I never came out to my dad. This son is out to his father, but this is the first time he really can have an open conversation with his dad. It’s the conversation I wish I could have had with my dad, who died about 30 years ago. So that’s very personal to me.

Many of the character’s and words come from Tony’s life and people he knows, and we have the same sort of vantage points being older gay men. I love this play. I think it has an enormous amount of psychology, the relationship between parent and adult children. Both my parents are gone now, and I’m older, so I identify with that. I don’t want to mislead you, this play isn’t as much about end-of-life issues, as much as it is about the political discussions of the characters. If I knew I had been diagnosed with some horrible mind-altering disease, that time was short for me to make decisions for myself. I think I would want to be able to make the decisions on my own before I went into that place where all of my decisions are gone. I think older audiences are really going to watch that.

AK: I think a good way to finish would be for you to list some adjectives that describe this play and your relationship with it. Just a little associative game.

JV: Primitive. Gutsy. Visceral. Demanding. Hysterical. Crazy. Uber-nuts. There’s a lot of craziness in this play. Like I said, there’s a lot of overlap. The longest sustained scene is 20 minutes where almost all of the dialogue is overlapped. So, how is the audience going to get all that? They’re not; they’ll pick and choose. But we’ve all experienced that. We go home for Thanksgiving, a reunion with our families, all in the big room in the house, 20 people and 10 conversations at once. We recognize that. So, recognition. Hope. Love. Lot of love.

Interview by Alan Katz
DC Theatre Scene


The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Directed by John Vreeke - Theatre J - Washington DC



The Washington PostRead the interview with Tony Kushner and John Vreeke in The Washington Post
HERE