Think of it as a tribute to hard-earned progress: In the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex marriage in several states — including Colorado — PBS will offer a reminder of how different things were for gays in an earlier era.
premieres on “Live from Lincoln Center” at 9 p.m. Oct. 10 on Rocky Mountain PBS. Nathan Lane is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking in the title role in this filmed version of Douglas Carter Beane’s 2013 drama.
Set in New York in the 1930s, “The Nance” provides the backstory for those who aren’t sure why the current headlines about gay and lesbian weddings are a big deal. For younger viewers, it may explain a great deal about the older generation’s difficulties with sexuality and relationships.
Essentially a backstage story, the play contrasts the flamboyant onstage life of a “nance” with his carefully coded and closeted life offstage. The two-and-a-half-hour production sheds light on the dangerous, necessarily secretive world of gay men at a time when police raids were commonplace and gay culture existed only underground.
Then, some 80 years ago, the idea of sanctioned homosexual relationships leading to marriage equality and stable families was inconceivable. (Where does the stereotype of the furtive, sexually predatory, cruising homosexual in the park come from? See “The Nance.”)
“We live in such arresting times,” as Chauncey Miles (Nathan Lane) says, punning his way through the show. The times were marked by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s crackdown on burlesque on the eve of the 1939 World’s Fair.
The was a flaming parody of a gay man, exaggeratedly camp and usually played by a hetero actor. For reference, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz” and Edward Everett Horton in dozens of 1930s film comedies count as nances. The nance was a master of the double entendre, making people laugh “at the gap between what is known and what can be said,” Chauncey says.
The “pansy act,” with a gay man playing the part, was “kind of like a Negro doing blackface,” Chauncey notes. The self-loathing inherent in the role is what gives it its edge.
The playwright’s primary reference for the piece was George Chauncey’s book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940.” The character Chauncey was named for the author.
(“The Producers” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”), told critics Chauncey’s difficulties with the concept of love are not dissimilar to his own, earlier in life.
Of course he excels at the broad humor, but Lane also delivers in challenging dramatic scenes depicting Chauncy’s love affair with a younger man (Jonny Orsini).
The generational differences are telling.
Addressing critics, Beane said “there is a young generation of queer writers who think we should be angry about (the nance stereotype) and hate it. But I look at it as visibility. I look at it as, they’re almost always funny, and they almost always lift up any scene they’re in. They’re kind of strong, and they kind of say what they want to say and get it done.” At the same time, he said, “I also know that that comes from a place of ridicule, a place of humiliation… so, the minute something is two things and they’re the exact opposite, I’m drawn to it as a writer.”
That dichotomy works in the play’s favor, as the viewer confronts the opposing forces of comedy and pathos.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
