It’s the play with the unprintable name. And bluntly speaking, “F*cking Men” really is exactly what the play is about.
Written by Joe DiPietro and directed by Calvin Remsberg, the engaging two-hour show runs until Feb. 20 at the intimate Celebration Theatre. “F*cking Men” bares all (in both the figurative and literal sense) in its look at the lives of 10 gay men, open and closeted, from various walks of life.
There’s John (Brian Dare) the scrawny young escort, with whom Steve (John Michael Beck) the soldier has his first homosexual experience.
There’s Marco (Christopher Grant Pearson) the graduate student whose boyfriend won’t return his calls and among others, Donald (Gregory Franklin) the closeted television journalist still recovering from the death of his lover.
The play is set up in a kind of circular progression so that every character crosses lines with another: John meets Steve, Steve meets Marco, Marco meets Kyle (Michael Rachlis) the college kid adamant about being a bisexual, and so on.
It is this connection that is at the heart of “F*cking Men.”
In the opening sequence, the 10 men follow each other as they walk along the circle of the reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, painted and uncensored on the stage floor.
The set, designed by Tom Buderwitz, is a monochrome affair in mute yellow. Curved counters acting as furniture enforce the circular space created on stage, which is surrounded by the audience on three sides.
The meeting between the pairs of men in each of the 10 scenes always, inevitably leads to seduction and to sex.
It seems for a while that there are no consequences to these men’s actions.
And just as the play comes to a point where you begin wondering exactly why you are sitting audience to these men’s promiscuous engagements with one another, Sammy (A.J. Tannen) the playwright enters.
In a metatheatrical moment, Sammy says, “It’s about the empty lives of urban gay males,” and takes a humorous stab at the people who actually show up to watch it.
But of course it’s about a lot more. The show explores the navigation between sex and love, and neither entirely condemns nor endorses sexual promiscuity.
The only certainty these characters seem to establish is that whatever meaningless ends they may reach, they will time after time again seek to make a connection with another person. And that’s where the optimism lies, in the intention.
The production achieves a balance between the humorous and the serious, building in emotional intensity toward the end. The gem moment of the entire show comes in an unexpectedly powerful last scene that belongs to Donald. It’s an emotional climax that will be hard to forget.
Whether you are an outsider or an insider to the modern gay male community, the play proves more than ever that the struggles these men contend with are not confined to a subculture.
““ Ruiling Erica Zhang
E-mail Zhang at rzhang@media.ucla.edu.