stories, making him the perfect person to reinvigorate one of the most maligned, and misunderstood, scripts in the queer canon.When Crowley first offered his play in the late Sixties, gay men were not only rarely seen in American culture, they were forbidden to display their lives in public, and were regularly arrested, beaten, shunned, and fired from their jobs if they dared to do so.
Mantello, who has directed several Albee plays to acclaim and is known for his precision and meticulous eye, was hesitant when Ryan Murphy first approached him to refashionfor a 50th anniversary revival on Broadway. And one could worry there might be a sort of guilt-by-association, with Murphy’s TV shows becoming synonymous with a certain type of overripe, camp, messiness that’s more about surface than substance.
“If I saw a white actor as Emory, Joe and I would have had a really long talk first,” says Michael Benjamin Washington, who has also spent the last five years producing a play about gay civil rights icon Bayard Rustin. “The play is a masterclass in subtlety and being, but it has a very different sting and ring coming from Robin. There’s only so much I’m able to justify about why Bernard doesn’t leave.
While the Broadway production was flashy, with a set composed of mirrors and a louche red palette that encased the characters in glamour, the apartment crafted by production designer Judy Becker for the movie has a feeling of decaying grandeur, filled with a mishmash of antiques, movie posters, rugs, and velvety furniture. You get a sense of nicotine stains and neglect in the penthouse as the drama unfolds from the balcony to the bedroom.
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