WINNER OF THE 1993 OBIE AWARD,
OUTER CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
AND THE JOHN GASSNER AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEW AMERICAN PLAY

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Suddenly, just after he's reconciled himself to celibacy, Jeffrey's flamboyant friends introduce him to the man of his dreams, who also happens to be HIV positive. What follows is an audacious and moving romantic comedy with a difference - one in which the quest for love and really fabulous clothes meet and where unflagging humor prevails even when tragedy might be just around the corner.

'Wildly funny... just the sort of play Oscar Wilde might have written had he lived in 1990s Manhattan ... the laughter along the way is a battle cry, a defiant expression of who these idiosyncratic characters were before AIDS arrived, and who they will still be after it has gone. " - The New York Times

"The hottest ticket Off Broadway ... even with AIDS lurking in the background, JEFFREY sparkles ... Mr. Rudnick ... has come up with some of the funniest lines and deftest gimmicks on stage today... He is a master of one-liners. " -The Wall Street Journal

published-13 Jun 2007
Love and humor attack gloom and doom in AIDS battle

by Steve Eskew
The Omaha Reader

Since impending peril invariably hovers closely to sweet pleasures, exciting activities like skydiving and racecar driving can be exhilarating but deadly. So can sex. Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey explores this issue at SNAP!/Shelterbelt with considerable comic aplomb relating to risky relationships among gay men during an especially precarious period.

In the mid-1990s, antiretroviral drugs and protease inhibitors that eventually made HIV infection manageable, as opposed to hopeless, had yet to gain extensive attention. Jeffrey (Ryan Eberhart), a promiscuous and “very merry” gay man living in AIDS-ravaged New York City, suddenly chooses to become celibate primarily to evade contamination, but also to avoid the annoyance of obsessive servitude to his libido, not to mention “the agony of customarily wearing eight condoms.”

Living his life under the assumption that lust can be lethal, though admitting he’s “hornier than hell,” Jeffrey strongly believes celibacy will enable his “career” to escalate. (He’s as an actor presently working as a cater waiter). He spends his spare time hanging out with Sterling (Jerry Evert), who possesses an acerbic wit and also a boy toy named Darius (Stephen Michael Shelton), whom he adores and considers “a wonderful pet who can feed and walk himself.” Darius contracted HIV before they met, obliging the two to practice safe sex and live life to the fullest.

Fate jumps into Jeffrey’s life at Big Mark’s Himnasium where he becomes especially attracted to Steve (Michal Simpson). After constantly running into each other in such places as the Lower Manhattan Masturbation Society, they eventually hook up. However, when Steve reveals his HIV status as positive, Jeffrey rejects him as a prospective lover largely because he dreads the inevitable nightmare of watching the illness ravage a partner.

This show’s greatest triumph is how it’s able to handle one of the world’s most serious subject matters with uproarious but innocuous humor. Refusing to be consumed by gloom or to engage in justifiable “gay rage,” the characters rise up with no façades or obscured agendas.

Because Jeffrey exhibits some considerably self-centered traits, Eberhart becomes inadvertently upstaged by the more empathetic characters, but never allows this to discourage him from showing the audience Jeffrey’s intensely human flaws. Electing not to eat the scenery in order to win favor for Jeffrey, Eberhart humbly holds back, facilitating Simpson, Evert and Shelton to showcase their superb talents.

John Carlson, Mark Cramer, Echelle Childers, Jay Huse and Barb Ross all lend terrific support in multiple roles that understate sentimentality in favor of caustic humor. For example, a lecherous priest (Carlson) claims to feel God’s presence during sex and Broadway tunes, and wonders aloud how anyone could give up sex “when there’s children in Europe who can’t get any.”

Jeffery finally comes to believe that “God is the best in each of us” and that his repudiation of love and the God-given gift of sexual pleasure will inevitably render him a meaningless survival in lieu of a bona fide life. Steve’s genuine decency awakens Jeffery to an awareness of his own egotistical nature and impracticable paranoia, allowing him to appreciate the preciousness of love and how its value skyrockets when disease threatens its longevity.

Originally produced by SNAP! in 1994, this revival maintains Rudnick’s timeless, piercing message. Co-directing accolades go to Simpson and M. Michele Phillips. Both of these fine directors’ distinctive artistic stamps can be readily and pleasingly detected. Slides of Manhattan place the audience into a New York state of mind. Outstanding performances amid rapid pacing and creative visual rhythms on a relatively naked stage make Jeffrey exciting theater. ,

Jeffrey continues through June 21, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 6 p.m. at SNAP!/Shelterbelt, 3225 California. Adults $15, students and seniors $12. Call 341.2757 or visit snapproductions.com.

Published Saturday | June 2, 2007

Review: SNAP revival of gay comedy earns laughs at serious subject
BY BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

"Jeffrey," Paul Rudnick's 1993 gay comedy about fear of sex and commitment, felt very current when it arrived at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Set in New York, it was funny, outrageous, a little bit sentimental.

And it told the truth about how people were feeling in the wake of a time before sex got so deadly.

Thirteen years after SNAP Productions staged "Jeffrey" at the now-defunct Firehouse, a revival that opened Thursday succeeds at tripping the laugh trigger, though it feels more hit and miss now.

As you find yourself connecting more with Jeffrey's HIV-positive boyfriend, Steve, than with the title character, it says something about both the script and the actors.

Ryan Eberhart, as Jeffrey, has natural comedic skills that make him consistently fun to watch. He's at his best flirting with Steve, dashing around as a waiter and cracking wise. But Jeffrey's hard to warm to.

Michal Simpson, as Steve, not only earns laughs but effectively sinks his teeth into the piece. Steve is the most likely character to make us dig a little deeper into the emotional reservoir.

Comedic pearls come from some fine supporting players, including Jerry Evert as the advice-giving older gay friend, Sterling: "You need a boyfriend - you know, like a pet who can feed and water himself."

A personal favorite was Stephen Michael Shelton as Sterling's partner, bubble-headed Darius, a flamboyant actor appearing in "Cats." Shelton's is the most consistently compelling performance.

John Carlson is quite good as a Catholic priest who dispenses unorthodox theology, though some of the lines about his sexually predatory habits drew groans for the broad brush Rudnick paints with.

Echelle Childers and Mark Cramer hit their stride as a pre-surgical transsexual and his mother at a pride parade, while Barb Ross is a hoot as a leather-clad lesbian biker.

The set is little more than black draperies, with slides and videotape on three overhead screens to establish locations.

Backstage curtain rustling and whispering detracted a bit, but directors M. Michele Phillips and Simpson pace things well.

The bigger issue was consistency in the comedic bits.

"Jeffrey" may have lost its cutting edge but not its ability to make us laugh at issues surrounding a serious subject.

No, this “Gay ’90s,” although also somewhat silly and sentimental, is a decidedly decadent decade a century later as seen through the eyes of Gotham’s Christopher Street cruisers who mix with the boxer-clad boy-toys pumping iron at the “himnasium” who, in turn, pursue the hordes of waiter/actors (do they, I wonder, aspire to the loftier goal of becoming actor/waiters?) in “Jeffrey,” the adult-themed play from SNAP! Productions now running at the Shelterbelt Theatre.

First produced by the company in 1994, “Jeffrey” is part of the SNAP-Back Series, a celebration of SNAP!’s 15th season. Time has a way of turning acronyms into meaningless alphabet soups. Lost on many of us is the notion that “SCUBA,” for example, once referred to “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus,” or that “AT&T” stood for “American Telephone and Telegraph.” So, with “Jeffrey,” it might be timely to remind readers that the frequently gay-themed shows at SNAP! are borne of the fact that the acronym stands for “Support Nebraska AIDS Project.”

And it is the scourge of AIDS that creates a post-apocalyptic dating scene in New York’s West Village as Jeffrey (Ryan Eberhart) swears off love when things become impossibly complicated by a specter that promises nothing more than your own square on the AIDS Quilt Project.

A label usually reserved for works that are at least a generation old, it is odd to apply the term “dated” to such a recent play. As shows go, most “teens” of this age (“Jeffrey” was originally produced in 1993) should be buying Clearasil by the case and dreaming of getting a driver’s license in a couple of years.

“Jeffrey” simply would not, indeed, could not, be written the same way today. The central theme of promiscuity among gay men is one that is troubling because it feeds ugly stereotypes used by disingenuous types who wish to perpetuate the myth that all gay men are promiscuous.

It is true that “Jeffrey” is (was?) very “real” in humorously addressing the urgency of AIDS as a national health crisis that deserves our continued support. Perhaps my puzzlement merely indicates that I am naively conventional in that I just could not see any of my countless gay friends in those bed-hopping characters in “Jeffrey,” even in the “good old days” before AIDS.

But Paul Rudnick’s otherwise witty, double entendre-laden script and a classy cast made me all but forget about my misgivings regarding political correctness.

Michal Simpson (1994’s Jeffrey) is simply delightful as Steve, Jeffrey’s would-be lover, and Eberhart is very much at home in this rapid-fire cacophony of jokes about dykes on bikes, Liza Minnelli, parents of pre-ops and the Gay Pride Parade.

Dated or otherwise, “Jeffrey” does have some great moments, especially when bowing to the bittersweet in all the right places as our protagonist discovers that “sex was never meant to be safe, negotiated, or fatal.”

8 Days
May 31-June 21
Jeffrey
The Reader
SNAP! Productions, Thursday-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m., $12-15, 341.2757, snapproductions.com

SNAP! Productions celebrates 15 years of high-quality, groundbreaking theater promoting AIDS awareness and diversity tolerance via Jeffrey, one of the first plays set on the SNAP! stage and one of the most requested for an encore, said artistic director, show star and producer Michal Simpson. Jeffrey has won rave reviews from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and is sure to be a remount hit at SNAP! with an ensemble of nine renowned Omaha actors, directed by Simpson and TAG award-winner M. Michele Phillips, and produced by Phillips, SNAP! President Liz Heim, and the famed, award-winning playwright Joe Basque. Jeffrey is part of the theatre’s “SNAP!back,” bringing back the most requested plays presented over the past years.
— Sally Deskins