| "Lips
Together, Teeth Apart," a clever dramatic Comedy, now is playing at the Firehouse
Dinner Theater in a skillfully acted production for Support Nebraska AIDS Project (SNAP). Director M. Michele Phillips has done a wonderful job with Terrence McNally's
bitingly witty work. A fine cast includes some of the area's best acting talent: Angela
Ankenbauer, Terry Berner, Earl Bates and Brenda Kelley.
The brilliant ensemble work of the cast carries this
rather brittle comedy-drama beyond mere entertainment into the regions of stark drama,
even tragedy.
'They make vividly real an awful Fourth of July spent
at a beach house by a brother and and sister and their spouses The two dysfunctional
marriages have had a recent fling and the brother and sister know it.
The play has a larger resonance, though, because this
tale of adulterous tensions is set within a social matrix and of male homosexuality --
Fire Island. The Beach house is a bequest to Sally (Miss Ankenbauer) from her brother
David who died of AIDS. The neighbors on both stdes of the narrow property (unseen by, the
audience) are gay men
The heterosexual couples are squeamish about the
neighborhood, fearing even to use the clorinated pool.
The playwright uses frozen moments, when all
characters except for one freeze on stage while the fourth speaks aloud secret thoughts.
This is used sparingly, but it contributes more exposure of resentments and hurts.
This basic four character play could be lifted from
its gay frame to stand alone with the same power and the same humor - for the foibles of
these people are universal.
But McNally wants to make a larger statement - about
their homophobia.
In a way "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" is
something of a loving quarrel with heterosexuality by the playwright. It contains typical
gay concerns - skittishness about marriage, procreation, parenting.
But use of the larger frame is sometimes pushed too
far in a rhapsodic speech about homosexual love by Sam (Berner), who, up to that point,
was the most squeamish about gays. John (the adulterous in-law), a complete and
fascinating character cleverly presented by Bates, also has a sudden, incomprehensible
outburst of racism, homophobia and misanthropy that is not justified dramatically.
Adultery is the worm in this apple,and social
attitudes have little to do with inner dynamics of these sad marriage.
Berner is especially amusing in a play with plenty of
laughs; Miss Kelley, as a nonstop talker, carries a heavy role with ease; Miss Ankenbauer,
best of them all catches some of the poetry and anguish offered by the playwrigh |
