The 21st century started with such hope, such promise. We stood together and bravely strode forward into a new millennium … and promptly stepped into deep shit. As we struggle to scrape this decade’s droppings from our shoes, we wrestle with weighty questions. Where does hatred come from? What is the meaning of tolerance? Who do we want our children to be? How can we turn this into camp comedy?

At least that’s what I think Paul Rudnick is thinking. The author of Jeffrey and In & Out debuted his latest play, The New Century, off-Broadway this past April, so the ink must have been barely dry on the rights before Margaret Nolan of Kangagirl Productions snapped it up for a run in the Parliament House’s Footlight Theater.

New Century is built from three short plays: a pair of monologues bracketing a two-hander. In “Pride and Joy,” Helene Nadler (Elizabeth T. Murff) stakes her claim to the title “Most Long-Suffering Jewish Mother” by parading the tale of her homosexual, transsexual, coprophilic children with the Massapequa chapter of “Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others.” Nadler has turned aggressive empathy into an art form, and Murff nails every nasal nag as she both embraces and dismisses her brood’s increasingly alternative lifestyles.

“Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach,” a 1998 script that Rudnick re-purposed as New Century’s second act, stars Frank McClain reprising the role he winningly performed at the 2006 Orlando Fringe. Mr. Charles, the self-proclaimed last truly gay man (until “Spielberg uncovers ancient DNA from Paul Lynde”), is in exile from Manhattan for flaming too brightly. (“I was asked to leave. There was a vote.”) He takes revenge by embodying every over-the-top homosexual stereotype on a late-night public-access TV show, alongside his iron-ab’ed but empty-headed sidekick, Shane (Brock Yurich). McClain is again hysterical in his hysteria, especially as he delivers the history of American queer theater in 60 seconds.

“Crafty” introduces Illinois homemaker Barbara Ellen Diggs (Anitra Pritchard), a motherly manic-depressive who is too involved with her crocheted toilet-paper cozies. Her felt and fabric fixation is a desperate form of “craft therapy” (her major expenses are “labor, Zoloft and glue”), a defense against the pain of losing her son to AIDS before she had fully accepted his orientation. Pritchard’s funny Fargo-ian vowels are pitch-perfect, as are her perky props, but it was the laugh-free moments of honest emotion that made this the most affecting segment.

Finally, in the titular episode all the characters are brought together in a New York maternity ward on the flimsiest of pretenses; the parting message seems to be “Find solace in discount shopping.” Despite the efforts of director David Lee (an expert hand with this style of comedy) and his first-rate cast, Rudnick’s script feels fractured; the weak finale fails to make the sum greater than its often-entertaining parts. There are subtle flashes of depth beneath the acidic surface, but they were largely lost in the opening-night audience’s rapturous response to every arch one-liner. If you’re in New Century’s target demo, it’ll probably score a bull’s-eye; for me, it’s a solid shot that goes a little wide of the mark.

*****

Article in The Watermark:
By John Sullivan

Orlando | It's close to 10 p.m. on a Monday, and music is pouring out of the Parliament House's Footlight Theatre on a night when the house is usually dark. Inside, David Lee stands in the center aisle giving direction to the cast of the Southeastern regional premiere of playwright Paul Rudnick's The New Century.

"Okay, stay spread out," shouts Lee over the music. "And then come closer together as the curtain closes."

The cast, which includes actors Elizabeth Murff, Anitra Pritchard, Frank McClain, Brock Yurich, Catherine Stork, and Jack Stork, follow their director's lead and the full-dress rehearsal comes to a close. Lee instructs them to gather their props and costumes and join him to go over some notes. For a show opening in just five days, things seem to be going surprisingly well.

After some technical banter with the disembodied voices in the sound booth, Lee takes 4-year-old Jack Stork by the hand and leads him over to where I am sitting.

"Jack, this man is writing a story about our show and I thought maybe you could answer some questions for him," Lee says with a wink.

Like McClain, Jack is reprising the role he played at age 2 in the 2006 Orlando Fringe hit Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach. He offers that he is having fun doing the show, wants to be an actor, and that his mommy is waiting for him in the dressing room.

Advice from Alice
He may know his lines and his blocking, but Jack is too young to fully relate to Rudnick's words, at once hilarious but also layered with emotion and commentary about the human condition. The New Century actually consists of four one-act plays that take a comical, heartfelt and at times politically incorrect look at a quirky collection of over-the-top characters. The gay themes and one-line zingers follow a path Rudnick tread with previous hits like Jeffrey, I Hate Hamlet and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.

The New Century originally premiered in New York last spring and enjoyed a three-month run at Lincoln Center, although three of the "playlets" had been previously and separately produced.

Margaret Nolan's Kangagirl Productions is responsible for introducing the full play to Central Florida. Nolan saw a write-up about the show in The New York Times, told Lee about it, and they immediately set their sights on staging a local production as soon as the rights became available.

Nolan, who has collaborated with Lee for over 20 years, became even more enthusiastic about the project after meeting Linda Lavin (Alice) at an Orlando Gay Chorus fundraiser in October. Lavin won a Drama Desk Award for her portrayal of Helene Nadler in the Lincoln Center production of The New Century.

"I told Linda I was producing the play here and she stopped and looked at me seriously and said she loved her role in it and thought it was a sweet, soulful play," Nolan recalls. "At that time I had only read it once, and we had not fully cast it or had a read-through, so I was taken aback by what she said. I guess I had skipped over those characteristics of the play and focused on the campiness of Mr. Charles. I immediately re-read it, and then when I heard Murff reading her part I knew exactly what Linda was talking about. Murff and Anitra really bring the warmth, love and comedy to their roles."

Over-the-top characters
In Pride and Joy, Helene Nadler delivers a speech to the Massapequa chapter of "Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others" and reveals that she is the mother of a lesbian, a transsexual, and a bondage-loving gay son with a scat fetish. She later implores her husband, "Morris, I gave birth to three perfect children! What did you do to them?"

"This is one of the most brilliant pieces that I've read in a long, long time, and I'm so excited to be part of it," says Murff. "I've played lots of mothers, but never one like Helene Nadler. Her tales of woe are very funny, but Rudnick has such a gift of twisting it, and you share her insights and growth. And the gay themes—they're universal."

McClain plays Mr. Charles, the flaming cliché with a heart who is holed up in Palm Beach hosting a late-night cable talk show after being banished from Manhattan for being "too gay." With his hunky sidekick Shane, played by the adorable and acrobatic Yurich, Mr. Charles shines his rainbow light on everything from what makes you gay ("I do," he gushes) to how you can tell if the man sitting next to you at the theater is gay ("He's saving his Playbill and he's awake.").

In Crafty, Pritchard breathes life into Barbara Ellen Diggs, a craft-obsessed Midwesterner whose son died of AIDS. She recalls how she dealt with the acceptance of her Manhattan-transplanted "special son" through loving gifts of homemade potholders and sock puppets. Most of her expenses, she confesses, are in "labor, Zoloft and glue."

"In her Midwestern mind, she is hip, creative and cool, and for her that is enough," Pritchard says of her character. "She is a simple woman who has been forced to open her eyes to the world because of her son. I love that she can find happiness in the most unexpected ways and that she isn't afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve."

Camp spirituality
Over a drink following the rehearsal, and well after young Mr. Stork's bedtime, Lee says he is optimistic that audiences will connect with the show.

"Working on the play today, we talked a lot about the spirituality of the piece and how it resembles the myth of Persephone, who must go underground and experience some really dark and troubling times before being reborn as queen," Lee says. "Mr. Charles and the women in the play are each going through a mid-life crisis, and it takes a young gay ward and a very young boy to teach them about the power of change and forgiveness so that they can be reborn into… the new century. It's so very spiritual, but wrapped up in this really fast-paced, campy comedy."

Nolan also hopes that audiences will consider sentiments Rudnick suggests about gay life, the New Year and a new era.

"My own goal is to involve Kangagirl in producing projects that I feel have real substance and artistic merit, that are intelligently and emotionally provocative and that resonate with social justice issues," Nolan explains. "And I foresee collaborating with David Lee until we're 90 years sold. We have similar tastes and aesthetics, and I've always trusted his instincts."

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