Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
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by Dave Deveau, directed by Cameron Mackenzie
Zee Zee Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
January 11-21, 2018
Helen: “It’s exciting when young people make their own decisions”
On its first visit to Toronto, Zee Zee Theatre of Vancouver has brought its hit show My Funny Valentine by Dave Deveau to launch its first Canadian tour. Deveau’s 2011 solo play is based on a news story about the shooting death of the openly gay 15-year-old Larry King in Oxnard, California. Rather than focus on King or his killer or their families, Deveau presents a series of monologues by characters on the periphery of the event who, intentionally or not, reveal how the killing has affected them. This technique provides a useful distance from such a shocking event and presents a wider range of responses to the shooting than one might expect. The play confronts us with questions rather than answers since it suggests there are no easy solutions to either to prejudice against gay people or to school shootings.
Larry King (1993-2008), who came out when aged 10, began being bullied in Grade Three. He was still being bullied when he entered Grade 7 but did not let that deter him from wearing makeup and high heels to school. Because of California’s non-discrimination laws, the school could do nothing about his appearance unless it was considered disruptive. On February 11, King asked another boy in public to be his Valentine and later taunted him about it. On February 12 the boy brought a relative’s pistol to school and shot King in the head twice. King died on February 14th. Some teachers and King’s father thought the school should bear some responsibility for the incident by having encouraged King’s flamboyance. Others viewed King as a gay martyr on the order of Matthew Shepard (1976-98).
Marina Szijarto’s set for the show in the small cabaret space of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre defines the acting space by a circle of newspaper clippings and school binders that could have belonged to a Grade 7 student. A knick-knack case holds assorted objects a young gay male might have owned. The sole actor, Conor Wylie, is called The Collector in the programme, although that term is never used in the play. He is presumably the guardian of this impromptu shrine to Larry King. Neither King’s name nor that of his killer or even that of the town where the murder took place is mentioned.
The first of the seven characters Wylie plays is the would-be journalist for the free local newspaper who broke the story which later became national news. From the midst of sex with his wife, he hears of the shooting and races to be the first reporter on the scene. He is quite aware that he is making gain out of other people’s pain and nowhere in his monologue does he mention that there were other circumstances involved that made this more than just another school shooting. The one fact that affects him most is that the victim is the same age as his own daughter. The journalist keeps a photo of the victim in his wallet not to commemorate the victim as much as to memorialize his big break as a journalist.
After the blackout, sound cue and lights up that separate the various monologues, Wylie has become Gloria, a girl at the victim’s and killer’s school. Her self-involvement and her vain belief that she will escape the town she hates and become a star are sources of humour, but Wylie tends to overplay the upspeak and vocal fry of this modern-day Valley Girl so that she seems more of a caricature than a real character. Egocentric to the last, Gloria’s main concern is that the event at the school will now make it even harder for her to obliterate her memories of her school days than it was before.
Next up is a teacher at the school, Helen, clumsy, nerdy yet passionate and the most rounded of the seven characters. Helen is also the only character whom we meet more than once. An accident with a coffee cup and too much speaking to herself shows Helen not to be one used to public speaking or political organization. Yet, addressing what seems to be a meeting of parents in the aftermath of the shooting, Helen warms to her theme and becomes eloquent in demanding that the death of the gay student lead to positive change, preferably in the form of designating such killings as hate crimes. She says she was the first person the victim came out to and had been following his progress with admiration. One senses that Helen’s dedication to her cause derives from wanting to celebrate someone who showed a bravery in living life that she feels she lacks.
Among the remaining characters are an older gay man taking computer classes at the school, a male colleague of Helen’s who feels the school should have done something to rein in the victim’s flamboyance and Rhonda, a young girl from the school, who has two dads and who is in hospital awaiting a liver transplant. The older man, the only gay character of the seven, while he deplores the fate of the victim is not surprised at it given that he grew up when homosexuality was illegal. What impresses him most is how early young people seem to know they are gay and are willing to come out and how many out characters and celebrities there are now on television and in movies. The presence of Helen’s male colleague shows that homophobes exist not just in the outside world but, more troublingly, in the school system itself. Rhonda presents a contrast to the self-concerned Gloria while incidentally portraying the love that can exist in a non-traditional family.
Deveau gives Helen two more appearances. In the first she speaks again to an assembly of parents, this time celebrating the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed by the US Congress and signed into law by Barack Obama in 2009. The Act made hate crimes because of the race, colour, religion, sexual orientation or national origin of the victim an offence the federal government could pursue if local authorities did not.
In her final appearance, it is ten years after the killing and Helen is alone. Her admiration for the victim is still strong and she wonders now how his death came to inspire her to such a great extent. Though she mentions none of the school shootings or crimes against gay people that have happened since 2008, we know as she does that the killings still continue. This final scene feels like a coda to the action and must have been written or re-written recently to make the actions of 2008 relate more closely to the present.
Deveau’s play is not at all what one might expect on this subject. His willingness to reveal the outright hatred and, perhaps even more depressing, the indifference of some of his characters shows how difficult it is to make people see injustice even when they are only one or two steps removed from a hate crime. Much as we would wish Deveau had ended the play on the high note of Rhonda and her two dads, we recognize the realism of Helen’s final, no longer joyful view of the world.
Not all of Conor Wylie’s portrayals are equally subtle. His strongest, strangely enough, are of the two male homophobes, who are seething with rage. Also effective are his depictions of Rhonda and of Helen in the final scene. Deveau probably gives Helen an accident-prone nature to help lighten the tone, but it seems artificial and the play would be stronger without it. Wylie’s performance is admirable in how clearly and easily he differentiates the characters even when they share similarities as do Gloria and Rhonda in age or the two homophobes in outlook. This he does simply through gesture, tone of voice and sometimes the use of a prop like a diary for Gloria, a coffee cup for Helen or a blanket for Rhonda. Often, however, he needs no prop at all.
Deveau’s willingness to present such a range of responses to a hate crime, including both sympathy for the victim and the killer from his characters, make My Funny Valentine a play ripe for provoking discussion, much like his social media play tagged for teens, seen here in 2015. A play like My Funny Valentine could easily have been written to preach to the choir about the evils of intolerance. What makes it necessary viewing is that Deveau has framed the play deliberately to remove any sense of complacency the gay community may feel about the gains it has won. The Matthew Shepard Act, as it is known for short, may be law in the US, but, as we know, that doesn’t mean the US, or Canada, is free of hate crimes. The conclusion of Deveau’s play reminds us that tolerance can never be taken for granted and that the struggle for it is never-ending.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Conor Wylie; Conor Wylie as Gloria. ©2018 Dahlia Katz.
For tickets, visit http://buddiesinbadtimes.com.
2018-01-13
My Funny Valentine