"Falsettos" in Rhinebeck, NY this weekend

Falsettos is By William Finn (Music and Lyrics) and James Lapine (Book)

I just learned that Bill Finn's wonderful Falsettos is being performed not too far away in Rhinebeck, New York, and highly recommend seeing this moving and entertaining musical before it closes February 28. Remaining performances are Friday and Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday at 3:00.

Last Saturday's performance was a benefit for the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center, which hosted an after party. Rural Intelligence was there, and did some fabulous coverage of the event and its guests.

With music and lyrics by William Finn and book by William Finn and James Lapine, this Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of a totally dysfunctional Jewish family. Jason, the 13 year old son of Marvin and Trina is preparing for his Bar Mitsvah. Enter Mendel, the family psychiatrist, who is bedding down with the wife of Marvin who has just come out of the closet. The husband has taken up with the younger “Whizzer”. Got all that?

The Rhinebeck Cast.
Well, Jason thinks Whizzer is cool and has flat-out stated that there will be no Bar Mitzvah if Whizzer is not included. Across the hall lives a lesbian couple – Cordelia, the kosher caterer in charge, and her partner Charlotte, a doctor who will eventually determine that Whizzer has AIDS. From the opening number “Four Jews In A Room Bitching” through Jason’s “Everyone Hates His Parents”, Trina’s tour-de-force “I’m Breaking Down”, and Marvin’s lament, “What Would I Do” – the show is a complex and richly entertaining journey filled with laughter and tears.

The musical, while not heavy is nevertheless poignant, being set at the time when AIDS was beginning its insidious spread. A CENTERstage Production directed by Kevin Archambault with musical direction by James Fitzwilliam.

Composer Finn is a Berkshire regular with a house in Pittsfield (he teaches at NYU) and in residence each summer to nurture new writers and composers at the Stage 2 Music Workshop at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. He is also the composer of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and many other works.

Tickets are priced at $22 for adults and $20 seniors and children. More information at www.centerforperformingarts.org or call Box Office Manager Eileen Contreni at 845-876-3080.

Also on their schedule is Rent another musical which touches on gay themes, plaing from March 12 to 28.

Rachel Maddow to deliver the 2010 Smith College Commencement Address May 16

Rachel Maddow's most recent local appearance
was last August at Jacob's Pillow.
When Smith College President Carol T. Crist announced to the senior class that MSNBC's political analyist and Berkshire favorite Rachel Maddow would deliver the commencement address, it was an event all by itself. Watch and enjoy:



Maddow's success story is one that began locally. A contest launched Maddow’s career in 2004. As the winner of a challenge for a new on-air personality in Holyoke, Mass., she addressed listeners for the first time. Meeting with success at the local level, she soon joined the newly created Air America and, a year later, MSNBC.

Maddow's success may seem somewhat serendipitous, but she worked hard to get where she is. Maddow earned a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and earned a doctor of philosophy degree from Oxford University.

Maddow undertakes a regular 190 mile commute home to her 1865 house in Western Massachusetts. She maintains a teeny 275' apartment in Manhattan too. She is a real person, too, with a real full time relationship.

Rachel's human side: "One of my liabilities as a broadcaster is sometimes I get a little teary. Having a handkerchief is handy. My partner, Susan Mikula, buys me cute ones."

Lucky Dog.

Four Honorary Degrees to be Awarded

Commencement is on May 16 at 10 AM in Northampton. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Maddow, renowned dance composer Martha Myers, record-setter Victoria “Tori” Murden McClure, environmental justice advocate Peggy M. Shepard and global activist Princess Basma Bint Talal of Jordan.

The complete commencement schedule indicates that students may invite as many guests as they want.

Historic Homos: How the world viewed us in 1967

The Bad Old Days when a paranoid alcoholic, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and a deeply closeted self-loathing lawyer, Ray Cohn used the new medium of television to launch a national witch hunt for communists and gays.

It was a different world for LGBT's before Stonewall. Except for a meager handful of people like Gore Vidal and a few other brave souls, few challenged the status quo. Not only were queers supposedly not happy, but the word "gay" had not yet come into use. Yeah, the 60's were a very long time ago. Most American's alive today weren't even born yet.

This so-called CBS documentary on homosexuality is about as factual as Reefer Madness, and not half as funny.

Half a century ago, almost everyone was deep in the closet, and had been since Oscar Wilde went to jail during the Victorian era. It was not until the 1950's McCarthy-Army Hearings and its promotion of "Lavender Menace" theories that the first few voices of the gay liberation movement began to speak out about the persecution. That is when the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis were founded, and a few very brave souls admitted they were lesbian or gay to an ignorant world.

It was a dark time to be gay. And it is where self-loathing took hold of many men - now in their 60's to 80's - and driving them deep, deep into the closet. Open that door today, and you will find many old Republican white men like Idaho's US Rep. Larry Craig still afraid to come out. So they act out their desires in the anonymity of public rest rooms and react with denial when confronted. Granted, Craig was in his formative years when the infamous witch hunt called "The Boys of Boise" ruined hundreds of lives in that small city of 45,000. And it wasn't just Iowa, it was the whole damn nation. Vice squads were everywhere, looking for homosexuals to harass, arrest and extort. The underworld ran the bars; our business was not welcome elsewhere.

The straight world ruled, and it was one that was filled with public loathing, police hatred, and woefully misinformed psychiatrists and sociologists. Then, the biggest battle was doing away with intrusive laws, that penalized what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their own bedroom.


Those days contrast sharply with our current situation where most of us live and let live with our neighbors. But the old days left their mark for us older folks. That's the power of the shocking kinescope embedded above. It shows Mike Wallace and CBS News doing the first expose of homosexuality ever aired on television. If you think the news is manipulated today, watch how things used to be!

That it resembles Reefer Madness in many of its lies and distortions is not surprising, yet it documents just how far we have come. And have to go. With the right to marry, to serve our country in the armed forces and to live peacefully without harassment still being determined, it is not yet done. Even more worrying is that fundamentalist based homophobia is now spreading across Africa like a plague. The price of freedom, as always, is eternal vigilance.

Berkshires Snuggle Time - but Boston is about to get HOT!

This Mr. Sloane is going to be very entertaining.
At this point every winter many of us in the Berks start to get Cabin Fever, and there are simply not very many LGBT events here to make us leave the house. But my mind itches, it needs stimulation. So my annual forays into Boston and Albany begin. I would much rather write about events in the Berkshires, but other than The Mikado March 6 at the Colonial Theatre, there isn't a lot I am looking forward to.

Boston is humming. Their theatre and entertainment scene is approaching its peak. There's much to recommend as being worth a special trip. At the top of my list is Big Bean's Publick Theatre. They are mounting one of my favorite Joe Orton plays, Entertaining Mr. Sloane. It runs at the Boston Center for the Arts. The handsome and manipulative boarder who turns on and upsets the whole household is played by Jack Cutmore-Scott. Jack is currently in his fourth year at Harvard, and we hope to have an in-depth interview with him as to how he will approach his role. Jack is straight we are told, and so may be Mr. Sloane. It's complicated, funny and, yes, Mr. Sloane is entertaining too.

Cars, Kisses and Rusty Daggers
It's an all British cast for this production, including the return to the Boston stage of Sandra Shipley who plays Kath, a lonely, delusional landlady, in the junkyard house she shares with her declining father, Kemp (Dafydd Rees). Sloane, ever the handsome opportunist, quickly ingratiates himself, entering into seductions offered by both Kath, and her estranged brother Ed (Nigel Gore), who soon employs Sloane as his driver. Sloane’s past misdeeds and the dueling affections within the family soon collide, leading to a desperate act that proves the limit of his charms, and reveals the ruthless and cunning strategies that Sloane’s victims will engage in to preserve their unique arrangement.

The play is directed by Eric Engel who describes the dark comedy as "almost a farce. All four characters, because they are desperately lonely, allow their domestic, social and animal instincts to become irrevocably intertwined.” He adds, “Orton eliminates the line between the obvious and the Freudian, making things all the more confusing and delightful. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a perfect play for today's audiences, who can explore sexuality with intrigue and open minds, rather than fear and judgment.”

Few had heard of Maxwell Caufield until he played Mr. Sloane off-Broadway back in the 80's.
Entertaining Mr. Sloane will run from March 11 through April 3, 2010 at the Plaza Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in Boston's South End. Performances are Wednesdays at 7:30pm, Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm and Sundays at 3:00pm. Tickets: $33.00 - $37.50. (SPECIAL PRICING: Preview Performances March 11 -14 - All Tickets $20. More information from the Publick Theatre website.

Aaron Carter Tweets - "No" on California's Prop 8

Aaron Carter may be a man of few words, but they are the right words. Here he says everything that needs to be said about Don't Ask, Don't Tell as well as Prop 8. Adam Bouska photos.
Bad boy Aaron Carter is finally working on a new album - his first in five or six years - and is becoming a bit of a political activist now that he is laying off the pharmaceuticals.

The younger brother of Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, Aaron has been rehabilitating himself and keeping in touch with fans via Twitter.

Aaron Carter takes his shirt off.
His Dancing With the Stars appearance certainly helped, but for many of us, stripping his shirt off and taking part in the No H8 campaign in LA makes him one ok guy. Best of all, he sent one tweet that said: "Oh, Yeahhhh...I'm a single man."

There's an interesting story in his hard work to make a come back, one which I hope to interview him about some day. It is one thing for you or me to go through rehab and take our lives back. It's almost an impossible task for someone in the public eye. But it can be done if you ignore the twin pitfalls of adulation and nasty rumors.

Here's wishing him well in his healthy new lifestyle, and warm thanks for both the visibility and help fundraising for the second round of Prop 8.