End of the World Party
By Chuck Ranberg. Directed by Eric C. Engel. Set by Crystal Tiala. Lighting by Deb Sullivan. Costumes by David Brooks. Sound by Ilah Cibis. With Christopher Hagberg, Bill Mootos, Eric Anderson, Will McGarrahan, Miguel Gonzalez, Kieran Smiley, and Juan Luis Acevedo. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for the Arts through October 27.

" If we didn’t come back here, " asks one of the summer-sharers of a Fire Island beach house in Chuck Ranberg’s End of the World Party, " what would we do for cheap drama? " There is plenty of cheap drama in Emmy-winning television writer Ranberg’s End of the World Party, which takes its untimely title from an apocalyptic fête that serves as the play’s climax. But there are a lot of funny lines as well. The play’s resident Oscar Wilde, martini-swilling prison architect Hunter, won my heart at the get-go, when he announced that he and anxiously aging actor Roger were " timeless, like the Pyramids or Kitty Carlisle. "

Ranberg (whose credits include Frasier) brings a sit-com writer’s facility to his play, which is based on his own experience of Fire Island from 1986 to 1989. But therein lies the rub. Although he began work on the play a decade ago, he sets it in " last summer, " and this time frame — particularly with regard to an idyllic time for gay men and the ostensible ages of the characters — is difficult to reconcile. People supposedly now in their late 30s make reference to a pre-AIDS, drug-enhanced golden age for gay sex. But that would have occurred when they were too young to have been summer-sharing a beach house.

More important, this pre-write of Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! offers little that we haven’t seen before. In 1994, McNally gave us seven gay friends living though a summer in Dutchess County. In Ranberg’s play, which is seen here in its New England premiere, seven men are doing the vacation thing, in the shadow of AIDS and yearning for love, in the Pines section of Fire Island. Hunter, who functions as Auntie Mame–ish den mother to his variously troubled yet randy, exuberant housemates, can crack wise about any situation, but melodrama and Boys in the Band cliché abound. And the play’s worst line, " I wish I could put a condom on my heart, " might be the title of a gay C&W tune.

Hunter, Roger, Nick, Will, and Travis have shared the house they call " Ill Repute " for several summers. The commitment-phobic, drug-friendly Nick is a magnet for cute guys; this irks Roger, who’s looking for a permanent attachment. Will is a sexually compulsive hypochondriac who has never been tested for HIV. Travis has recently lost his partner, Barry, to AIDS and has turned to bad temper, clean living, and spiritual healing. As Hunter opines on a trip to the beach, " Why don’t we stop bringing Travis and just wet down one of the blankets? "

Rounding out the housemates (and taking Barry’s summer share) is wide-eyed 25-year-old Phil, who has recently arrived in New York from the Midwest. Also in his 20s is Chip, a platinum-bleached Adonis in white overalls who is the equivalent of Contact’s Girl in the Yellow Dress. Tender and naive, he falls for Nick, to Roger’s chagrin. Alas, Chip’s beauty does not extend to his brain; in Hunter’s terse assessment, " It’s a nice house, but there’s no furniture. " Hunter has the last word, too, when it comes to the play’s theme, wondering in a rare reflective moment whether friends are our real lovers, " the others just people we cling to in the dark. "

SpeakEasy Stage Company made its reputation a decade ago with an ace staging of Paul Rudnick’s gay comedy, Jeffrey. Since then the troupe has consistently supplied area premieres of recent New York hits (including Love! Valour! Compassion!), often fielding surprisingly good non-Equity casts. Here award-winning director Eric C. Engel helms an energetic staging punctuated by ocean noises and what at one point sounds strangely like a seagull laugh track (never heard that on Frasier). Some of the performances could be subtler, but Christopher Hagberg supplies Hunter with the crack timing he requires, and Bill Mootos, the only union-card-carrying professional in the ensemble, imbues Roger with a deft combination of smug, casual assurance and the desperation that any youth-worshipping culture attaches to age. Crystal Tiala has designed a workable set that makes the BCA Theatre seem airier than usual (though it fails as a beach). But design honors go to costumer David Brooks for the shirt for Hunter that’s festooned with the lurid image of the Wicked Queen from Disney’s Snow White. No wicked queens here, but some of the jokes qualify.

Issue Date: October 11 - 18, 2001