Some thirty years after The Boys In The Band presented a view of gay male life that was before Stonewall, before AIDS, before Anita Bryant. A lot of history and
a lot of heartache individually and collectively happened in this time. So
Terrence McNally penned a work with another group of eight gay men and put
them at a vacation home on a lake in Dutchess County, New York. The three
holiday weekends they spend there reveal a lot about themselves.
Hosts of the event are John Benjamin Hickey and Stephen Sellars a same sex couple who've been together for 15 years. Like so many in those years they've seen way too many of their friends die and one of those friends invited is Jason Alexander who is HIV+ positive who comes by himself. Alexander is almost a stereotype of a gay man who loves his Broadway musicals.
John Glover plays a pair of brothers both from across the pond and one of them has the disease full blown now. One brother is an acid tongued thing with no kind words for anybody. The other has come from Great Britain seeking better treatment for the disease.
Mr. Acid tongue has brought dancer/hustler Randy Becker along for some personal enjoyment. But Becker likes what he sees in another guest the blind Justin Kirk brought to the weekends by his partner Stephen Bogardus.
It all makes for some interesting theater and a lot is revealed about one and all.
Love! Valour! Compassion! ran 248 performances on Broadway in 1995 and won a Tony Award for its author Terrence McNally. It's a lot like a Eugene O'Neill play, short on plot per se, but long and deep on the characterizations. McNally was quite the acute observer of the gay scene, I've seen all of these people one time or other in my life.
The film is also like the film adaption of the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night where the house itself and the Connecticut beach location almost becomes a character in itself in the film. Here the Quebec woods stand in for the Hudson River Valley country and they stand in well.
I don't think you could do much better than a film that's a combination of Boys In The Band and Long Day's Journey Into Night. That is in fact what Love! Valour! Compassion! is.
The only thing that puzzles me is how director Joe Mantello handled John Glover playing twins on stage.
Hosts of the event are John Benjamin Hickey and Stephen Sellars a same sex couple who've been together for 15 years. Like so many in those years they've seen way too many of their friends die and one of those friends invited is Jason Alexander who is HIV+ positive who comes by himself. Alexander is almost a stereotype of a gay man who loves his Broadway musicals.
John Glover plays a pair of brothers both from across the pond and one of them has the disease full blown now. One brother is an acid tongued thing with no kind words for anybody. The other has come from Great Britain seeking better treatment for the disease.
Mr. Acid tongue has brought dancer/hustler Randy Becker along for some personal enjoyment. But Becker likes what he sees in another guest the blind Justin Kirk brought to the weekends by his partner Stephen Bogardus.
It all makes for some interesting theater and a lot is revealed about one and all.
Love! Valour! Compassion! ran 248 performances on Broadway in 1995 and won a Tony Award for its author Terrence McNally. It's a lot like a Eugene O'Neill play, short on plot per se, but long and deep on the characterizations. McNally was quite the acute observer of the gay scene, I've seen all of these people one time or other in my life.
The film is also like the film adaption of the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night where the house itself and the Connecticut beach location almost becomes a character in itself in the film. Here the Quebec woods stand in for the Hudson River Valley country and they stand in well.
I don't think you could do much better than a film that's a combination of Boys In The Band and Long Day's Journey Into Night. That is in fact what Love! Valour! Compassion! is.
The only thing that puzzles me is how director Joe Mantello handled John Glover playing twins on stage.