Daniel and Mitchell are a successful architect and a novelist who have lived comfortably and happily in a committed relationship for the past seven years. They are the very picture of an ideal gay couple, so what could possibly go wrong for them?
From the opening scene of Daniel’s Husband, the latest world premiere by South Florida’s most prolific and acclaimed playwright, Michael McKeever, a dinner with friends plus parlor games and light, witty banter, one can sense that the boom of tragic events will soon fall on the contented couple. There are further glimmers of the crisis ahead as Mitchell (Antonio Amadeo) launches into his oft-spouted, somewhat pedantic explanation of why he is philosophically opposed to same-sex marriage.
As the nation cautiously waits for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the subject, Daniel’s Husband is a timely worst-case-scenario dramatization. For Daniel (Alex Alvarez) — who longs to be wed to Mitchell — soon has a crippling stroke that leaves him a quadriplegic, unable to speak or otherwise communicate. And without benefit of marriage certificate or health care surrogate papers, their relationship has no legal status. Worse, they are vulnerable to the machinations of Daniel’s assertive mother (Laura Turnbull), who sues to regain custody of her grown son.
All of this might have played out as dry and contrived if it were not for McKeever’s ability to breathe life into these position-based characters and, at least early on, wring some humor from them as well. We recognize the humanity that trumps the legal tug-of-war. Daniel’s Husband works as topical drama, timeless love story and cautionary tale for those with blinders who think this could not possibly happen to them.
Director Andy Rogow has a first-rate cast and another triumph for his intimate Island City Stage, which soon moves from Fort Lauderdale’s Empire Stage to its own space in Wilton Manors. Foremost in the company is Amadeo, who registers the distress and anger of the couple’s dilemma on his malleable face, exactly what Alvarez’s character cannot do.
Amadeo goes head-to-head against Turnbull, who keeps insisting that there are no villains in the situation, even as it is hard to muster any compassion for her. In the opening scene, Alvarez is laid back but vibrant, a distinct contrast to the way we see him for most of the rest of the play, mute, immobile and wheelchair-bound. Particularly chilling is his description of the stroke, an understated monologue confided to the audience after he has lost the ability to speak.
Daniel’s Husband is essentially a triangular conflict, but McKeever enlarges the canvas with the dinner party couple, Mitchell’s literary agent Barry (Larry Buzzeo) and his much-younger partner-of-the-moment, Trip (Kristian Bikic), a home health aide. Both are welcome presences, tangential to the crisis, yet playing important roles in the skirmish.
Regardless of your view of gay marriage, it would be hard not to drawn into the nightmare brought about, at least in part, by Mitchell’s cavalier attitude towards his legal protections. Daniel’s Husband is well-crafted and easy to identify with, regardless of one’s sexual orientation. Those who have watched McKeever’s writing evolve over the years know that it is just a matter of time before a play of his brings him national recognition, and Daniel’s Husband deserves to be that play.
DANIEL’S HUSBAND, Island City Stage at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Through Sunday, July 5. $30. 954-519-2533.
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For the past 20 years, Miami’s City Theatre has been proving that size isn’t everything with its festival of brief, 10-minutes-or-so plays, dubbed Summer Shorts. For years, it was a sprawling, multi-part evening of a dozen and a half pieces, most of which were on-target winners theatrically speaking and, inevitably, a dud or two which made one question the artistic team’s taste and/or sanity.
Perhaps for economic reasons, Summer Shorts 2015 is whittled down to a mere nine plays, performed by a cast of six. But the material is almost uniformly entertaining and the company of actors is ideally versatile. At a running time of only two and a quarter hours, City Theatre has de-emphasized the festival aspect of the potpourri evening, but this year’s production is more consistently satisfying than any edition I can recall, and I’ve seen them all. Giving up some quantity for a marked increase in quality seems a welcome tradeoff.
Not coincidentally, I suspect, producing artistic director John Manzelli has avoided nationally recognized name playwrights, except for the pseudonymous Jane Martin who contributes a crafty playlet called Bedtime, in which two couples — one young, one old — share the same bedroom space. Gradually, we come to realize they are the same couple at different points in their lives, a rumination on marriage, both newlyweds and the long-married and settled. Concise and pointed, as the best of Summer Shorts are.
Less well-known, at least to me, is Kelly Younger, who has two plays on discomfort in this year’s Shorts. Mandate is a broadly comic scene between two guys (Michael Uribe and Bechir Sylvain) at a bar, brought together by their wives. The problem is they quickly realize they have nothing in common. Let’s Get Physical is a deliciously awkward sketch about an airline pilot (Tom Wahl) taking his annual clearance physical, unexpectedly in the presence of a female doctor he has begun dating (Chastity Hart) and his longtime physician, who has had his romantic advances rebuffed by her.
Wahl is hardly typecast, but he does play an airline pilot again in another piece, Edith Freni’s Flare, seated on a flight next to a nervous passenger (Beth Dimon) who gets on his nerves, until he learns the reason she is flying. Dimon is a scene-stealing bystander at a bar in Cougar, by Holli Harms, in which she observes an encounter between an apprehensive woman (Karen Stephens) waiting to reunite with a famous poet who was once her lover. Instead, his son (Uribe) shows up with the news that his father has died, but smitten with her from his father’s verse, he proceeds to seduce her.
In past seasons, acting honors have gone to Steve Trovillian, an academic who provided a master class in comedy through Summer Shorts. This year’s production belongs to Dimon and Stephens, who appear together in Patricia Cotter’s The Anthropology Section as former lovers who meet unexpectedly in a bookstore. Stephens also is well showcased in the evening’s most serious scene, Risen From the Dough by France-Luce Benson, as a Haitian immigrant in Miami who struggles in her adopted land have brought her to owning a bakery with her sister, but have not erased her bitterness.
At the other extreme, tonally speaking, is Human Resources, by R Eric Thomas, a loopy scene of office life populated by a series of new arrivals — literally puppets. Either it is a commentary on the contemporary workplace or an exercise in absurdity. It is one of three scenes directed by Manzelli, who also injects himself into the production through video transitions, seen roaming the Arsht Center and getting in the way of the staff.
In addition to showcasing the compact scripts and the agile acting company, Summer Shorts is an opportunity to see area directors’ work, here including Margaret Ledford, Paul Tei and ensemble member Sylvain.
After 20 years in various venues in the region, Summer Shorts is surely a known quantity to local theatergoers. So it is probably enough to remind them that it is currently running and is one of the best collections in City Theatre’s history.
SUMMER SHORTS 2015, City Theatre at the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theatre, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Through Sunday. $35-$45. 305-949-6722.