This season audiences have lots of gay-relevant theater to choose from. We’ve already been treated to a play featuring opera diva Maria Callas, two addressing anti-gay bullying, and one about faith. Two more open this month. On Nov. 9, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stackner Cabaret reprises Brent Hazelton’s Liberace! with Jack Forbes Wilson performing the title role. Then, the Skylight Music Theatre opens the iconic Wizard of Oz on Nov. 21.
Somewhere on the spectrum of our modern gay narrative is the legendary Liberace, Mr. Showmanship. I recall seeing him on TV variety shows back in the day. Even as a child, I recognized something “specific” about him. I had a gay uncle. Perhaps that let me in on the secret. But Liberace would literally carry his secret to the grave. With Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy on an obsessively homophobic witch-hunt in the 1950s, it was not a good time to be gay. Liberace, the artistic outsider from West Allis (of all places), would successfully sue a British tabloid for libel when it published an article implying he was “fruit-flavoured.” A legal Pyrrhic victory, it forced him to continue the denial even as the exaggeratedly campy caricature of his “Mr. Showmanship” persona became more and more extravagant. Buttressed by his “chauffeur’s” palimony suit, rumors of his sexual orientation persisted. Even his death of AIDS in 1987 remained a secret until a coroner offered an official second opinion.
The play’s author and director Brent Hazelton explores the man behind the mask. He presents both the outside and inside of Liberace’s evolution from small-town talent to incredibly rich, famous and flamboyant entertainer. Along with the onstage, over-the-top foppishness and musical legacy from Chopsticks to Chopin, Hazelton delves deeply into the man’s lonely personal life. This is the heart of the tragedy—a universally human habit of compromising honesty for fear of real or imagined repercussions. In that aspect, Liberace also personifies the secret and ultimately sad state of pre-Stonewall gay life.
On a lighter note, the Skylight stages The Wizard of Oz, a musical classic of the LGBT canon. Whether or not Frank Baum’s original Oz fairytale from 1900 is really about the gold standard and politicians no one since remembers, its 1939 Technicolor film version was instantly appropriated by the LGBT community. Soon after its release, the phrase “friend of Dorothy” became part of the queen’s vernacular to identify a gay man. Over the years, the work became ever more entrenched as a metaphor for the LGBT struggle. It gave us an icon in Judy Garland, “Over the Rainbow” as an anthem and that elusive rainbow as a rallying symbol. Some even say Garland’s death was the spark that set off the Stonewall powder keg. Since then, as “friends of Dorothy,” we have found our courage in standing up, our brain in our activism and our heart in our diversity. Hopefully, as we exercise the rights we’ve achieved through courage and brain, we keep our heart.
