Think about it: When a TV series introduces a gay character, or when a feature film offers even a whiff of gay romance, it's treated as a cultural milestone. Yet, night after night, year after year, Broadway plays have featured gay and lesbian characters routinely, a fact long celebrated by those men and women proud to be known as show queens.More commercial than off-Broadway stages where so much gay theater has taken shape, Broadway has still for decades delivered shows that, if not overtly gay, possess a gay sensibility. From composers such as Stephen Sondheim (now represented on Broadway by a revival of his groundbreaking musical "Company") to out actors like Nathan Lane and Cherry Jones, Broadway has allowed gay talent to flourish.
What other medium, besides literature, can compare with such landmark and culture-impacting works as Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy," Terence McNally's " Love! Valor! Compassion!," Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," or Doug Wright's "I Am My Own Wife"? Long before "Philadelphia," "Brokeback Mountain" or "The L Word," "Rent" gave the world gay and lesbian characters among the bohemians dealing with AIDS. In the mid-1970s, "A Chorus Line" (now enjoying a Broadway revival) acknowledged that without the gays and transvestites of the chorus, there wouldn't even be a Broadway.
This Broadway season doesn't offer a big gay show like, say, "La Cage of Folles," but instead, there are many shows with gay characters and that elusive but unmistakable "gay sensibility." No show evidences this more than "Grey Gardens," a musical molded by three gay men -- writer Doug Wright, lyricist Michael Korie and composer Scott Frankel -- about a pair of reclusive, aristocratic women whose coping mechanisms include warbling show tunes and hurling recriminations. The 1975 documentary on which the show is based was a gay cult film and the musical now draws legions of gay fans.
When I interviewed Wright for PlanetOut back when the show was running off-Broadway, I asked him about the gay attraction to "Grey Gardens." Wright said coping with tragic events with "wit and idiosyncratic style always speaks to the gay experience."
Other shows that have struck a chord with gay audiences include "Spring Awakening," which weaves gay sexuality into its examination of the thrill and confusion of sexual coming of age. "Avenue Q," which won the best musical Tony in 2004 an upset over the heavily favored "Wicked," also addresses gay and gender issues playfully and poignantly. Similarly, "Hairspray," still a hot ticket on Broadway, isn't overtly gay but, owing to the John Waters movie, has a spirit of high camp, messages of tolerance and one of the best drag roles ever, made famous by the legendary Fierstein in his Tony-winning performance.
Another blockbuster, "Wicked," sprang from the imagination of gay writer Gregory Maguire and spins "The Wizard of Oz" into a musical about sibling rivalry and a delicious pair of diva roles. Gay writer Terence McNally also knows all about divas (his "Master Class" was about the greatest diva of all, Maria Callas) but his new play, "Deuce," about a pair of aging female tennis stars (played by Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes), is more Margaret Court than Martina.
The simplistic explanation for the proliferation of gay characters in plays and musicals is that drama attracts us -- from Tennessee Williams to Terence McNally, from Paula Vogel to Paul Rudnick, the play is the way many gays have traditionally expressed the human condition. Theater is a refined -- as opposed to a popular, art form -- so there is also the feeling that the stage is a sacred place, at once safe and daring, intimate and universal.
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