Theatre Review: The Temperamentals

Rating ****

How many of you have heard of the Mattachine Society? Probably very few; many in the audience at the Greenwich Theatre last week almost certainly won’t have done until they saw this production of The Temperamentals. The Mattachine Society existed long before Stonewall, trying to fight for the rights of gay men and women in the United States.

The play tells the stories of the five men involved in establishing the society, showing why it formed and the individual histories of the founder members, and reflecting on their shared hope: simply the acceptance (or at least toleration) that many of us – in Britain at least – now take for granted. The Temperamentals was taken to Broadway, with one of the lead roles taken by Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie, before being taken up by Wild Oats Productions, who put on a stonking showing of The Laramie Project at the Greenwich Theatre last year.

The show’s lighting and design were, as can be the way with fringe theatre, very simple, but the careful use of a few key props and a consistency of design meant that at no point did it look basic. It was highly effective; giving the impression of a show with a far higher production budget than it actually had.

The production itself took a while to warm up. None of the characters’ storylines were completely engaging from the start, and it took until about halfway through Act One to really care about them. This may have been due to the frequency with which the play bounced from character to character at the beginning; having just gotten to grips with one storyline, the audience would be thrown into another. This did make it a bit of a struggle to keep up with what was happening, and to know exactly who to care about and what to root for. Happily, the second act was blessed with fewer, longer scenes and was much the better for it.

The most touching performances of the evening were, without a doubt, those of David Ames and Nicholas Cass-Beggs as Rudi Gernreich and the inspirational Harry Hay, (a man whose life story is well worth the few minutes it takes to find on Google): a couple very much in love but ultimately doomed in the ultra-conservative America of the 1950s. Their relationship, and the turmoil surrounding it (Hay being married and Gernreich needing to find a girlfriend to enhance his career), was believable; the lightness of their touch and the sensuality of their movement letting us know it was about much more than sex.

As has been found with many plays focused on a gay audience, there were times when it will have been just a little too worthy for some tastes. The benediction towards the end of the play, when hands are held and meaningful words exchanged, leaves you yearning for a time when a gay play is put on simply to entertain, without wishing to teach us something. However, Matt Kelly’s one liners as Bob Hull were perfectly placed to balance the schmaltz, and added a layer of Jack MacFarland-esque queenery that provided the perfect dash of sour to balance the saccharine.

Andrew Hayler and Tony Higgins gave equally strong performances, and convincingly managed to juggle their main roles with a number of less prominent ones. The bitchy chemistry between Hayler and Kelly was a joy to behold.

There are times when an audience can be taught something by a production, and this was one of those times. The play tells a chunk of gay history of which many will be completely unaware, in such a way that it will surely have inspired those watching to read more, and to discover more about the lives of the five men the story portrays.

The excellent performances aside, what was truly special about this particular performance was the Q&A session afterwards. The cast were joined on stage by the director and assistant director, and four high-profile guests, including Boy George and Brian Paddick. The discussion between the panel and the audience was sensible, realistic, and inclusive, and served to remind those gay men present of the battles that have been fought by generations before us, and of the work still to be done. It is only once full equality has been achieved and the work that these trailblazers started is completed, that we will see gay theatre that isn’t there to try to teach us something.

The Temperamentals won Best Intercultural Dialogue Award at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival and then played at The Greeenwich Theatre, London for two performances on 1 and 2 June.