The Big Picture and the Closeup

That is the ultimate temptation inherent in turning classic plays into vehicles for screen stars. Those stars pull in audiences filled with the uninitiated, with people who fundamentally do not know how to watch a play, and who are too easily satisfied. Commercial success can be achieved with something half-baked. And half-baked seems to be more the norm than the exception with the successes that do result. Classic plays tend to require directorial shaping; stars tend to tempt directors to slack off. It’s not a good thing.

This is poetry, poetry for the mind to sink into and be overwhelmed. To paraphrase Mae West, goodness has nothing to do with it. Nor does badness. It comes from some amoral place in Wilde’s psyche and appeals to that place in ours.

During the Broadway run and the professional tours, Spring Awakening tended to be too expensive for young audiences. I wondered how this show about and for youth would affect young audiences. I finally found out.

True, the conclusion that Tom is gay, closeted, and alienated thereby from his family is not absolutely compelled. The failure of the script to “go there” arguably leaves room for actors and directors to interpret. But any other conclusion than that Tom Wingfield, like Tom Williams, is gay would be misinterpretation. And it is a misinterpretation with consequences.

AS the play shows, even if the personal is political, personal trajectories and political ones can diverge. The sundering of Mattachine’s founders from the Society, and then from each other, is deftly rendered, along with the disagreements, persisting to this day, between those who embrace queer culture and wish to stay somewhat aloof from the straight world and assimilationists who view homosexuals as another marginalized minority that must strive for acceptance and integration. In short, this is a big play, with big themes.

Catholic turf should not be the bishops’ to rule in the first place. The hospitals and the universities were built with the funds and the blood, sweat and tears of generations of all Catholic believers, and should by all rights belong to all of their successors, the entire body of the faithful. Instead of acting like the in-title-only trustees of these institutions, accountable to those who built them and their successors, the hierarchy behave like the equitable owners. And if you think these would-be owners are in favor of religious freedom for the rest of us in the Catholic fold, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

If those who teach us about God are to dispel our reasonably doubts, they must be visibly and consistently honest and reliable. Someone who has participated in a coverup of criminal activity simply cannot command our trust that way.

Laws lots of people support and lots of people disagree with. How you do or do not comply helps determine how legitimate these laws are.