The recent Broadway stagehands’ strike briefly cast a pall over

the Big Apple, but before that happened, there was lots of great theater going

on in New York – much of it involving openly gay artists

and/or concerning gay themes and subject matter. All told, it was a very good

year. Here's a selective rundown of the exciting, surprising, entertaining, and

sometimes disappointing shows and performances that comprised gay theater in

2007, both on and off Broadway.

The Gayest Show of the Year

Xanadu, out playwright Douglas Carter Beane's

wickedly funny takeoff on one of the worst films ever made. True, it wasn’t

specifically gay, but starring the out Cheyenne Jackson and featuring disco

balls, roller skates, and fabulous muses, Xanadu

still takes this contest hands down.

Runner- Up: The Ritz, a

sidesplitting revival of Terrence McNally's knockabout gay bathhouse farce,

courtesy of the Roundabout Theatre Company. Honorable Mention for Achievement

Off-Broadway: Die Mommie Die!

Best Performance by an Openly Gay Actor in a Broadway

Musical

Not so long ago, it was unthinkable that there could ever be a tie in this

category, but that's just what happened in 2007. As the male lead in Xanadu,

Cheyenne Jackson is at once hilarious and devastatingly sexy – which, when you

think about it, is a rare combination. And David Hyde Pierce is comic

perfection as Lieutenant Frank Cioffi in Curtains, which boasts a

score by the openly gay team of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb.

Lifetime Achievement Award

This one goes to Edward Albee, arguably our greatest living

playwright and one of the first to be openly gay. His latest work is Peter

and Jerry, a rewrite and expansion of his one-act The Zoo Story. The

piece has no gay content to speak of, but it's very well done, and it boasts an

amazing performance by Dallas Roberts as the creepy Jerry. Catch it at Second

Stage Theatre before it closes on December 30.

Shades of Grey

The film Grey

Gardens has a cult

following among many gay men, and so did the musical based on the movie. Aside

from the Tony Award winning performances of Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise

Wilson as the eccentric Edith Bouvier Beale and her aged mother, the show

featured a stylish turn by Bob Stillman as George Gould Strong, a character who

might have amounted to nothing more than a gay cliché in other hands. Icing on

the cake: Heartthrob Matt Cavenaugh played Jerry, the Beale women's repairman

and friend, who turned out to be gay in real life.

Busch is Back

One of the few positive effects of the stagehands’ strike

was that some theatergoers who held unusable tickets to big Broadway

blockbusters opted instead to see Off-Broadway shows they wouldn't otherwise

have sought out. Word is that Die Mommie Die!, Charles Busch's

outrageous camp-fest at New World Stages, benefited greatly in this regard.

Busch gives a sublime performance as washed-up actress/singer Angela Arden, and

soap opera star Van Hansis is quite the hottie as Angela's troubled son. All of

this plus Bush's to-die-for costumes, designed by Michael Bottari and Ronald

Case, makes for a wildly entertaining show.

Heart and Music

William Finn is not the most consistent musical theater

composer/lyricist at work today, but when he's good, he's excellent. For

evidence, get thee to Make Me a Song, a revue that's now playing at New

World Stages — just steps away from Die Mommie Die! Included is a

condensed version of Finn's best show, the very gay Falsettos, along

with selections from his other, lesser-known musicals.

How Rude!

Spoofmeister Gerard Alessandrini's Forbidden Broadway appeals

to everyone, as evidenced by the fact that this hysterically funny revue has

been running almost continuously for more than 25 years. But FB gets

much of its comic edge from its underlying gay sensibility. For example, a

number sung to the tune of “June is Bustin' Out All Over” contains the

following lyrics: “Soon the season will be over /

This year, the sexy Cubans rate / With their little tails a swishin' / Every

chorus boy is wishin' / He could take Raúl Esparza on a date / (But I hear he's

married.)” Then there's this, sung to the tune of “Please Don't Monkey With

Broadway” by Cole Porter: "We're the Wicked

flying monkeys / Out of costume, we are cute Manhattan hunkies / Who cruise / Hell's

Kitchen walking in twos."

Blast From the Past

possible case for a play that many people thought was hopelessly dated: Tea

and Sympathy, Robert Anderson's fraught '50s drama about a boarding school

student who is mercilessly taunted because he's perceived to be gay. Dan McCabe

offered a touching performance as the boy in question.

Is the Star Out Tonight?

The Little Dog Laughed, all about a closeted movie

star who falls in love with a sweet-natured hustler, seemed promising but

flawed when it opened at Second Stage in January 2006. Author Douglas Carter

Beane did some reworking for the Broadway production, which bowed in November

of that year and ran only through mid-February of this year. His canny

rewrites, plus the inspired casting of Tom Everett Scott as the movie star,

resulted in an entertaining yet thought-provoking play that was sparked by

Julie White's Tony Award-winning performance as a relentless agent.

And the Award for the Most Memorable Male Nude Scene Goes

To...

Ian McKellen, who stripped to reveal that he was every inch a king in the RSC

production of King Lear at BAM. Runner-Up: Johnny Galecki, who jumped

out of bed naked when discovered in an intimate moment with Tom Everett Scott

in The Little Dog Laughed. Honorable Mention: Steve Blanchard, for the

Off-Broadway musical Frankenstein. Though Blanchard is not completely

nude as he stalks about the stage in his role of the Creature, his shirt is

wide open in every scene, and the muscular development he displays is so

impressive that it was mentioned in almost every review.

If You Show All of It, They Will Come

According to various reports, the most popular productions

in the New York International Fringe Festival, the Midtown International

Theatre Festival, and the New York Musical Theatre Festival were those that

featured male nudity and/or gay content. Go figure…

A Disappointing Gay Scene in an Otherwise Great Musical

Adapted by composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist-librettist

Steven Sater from Frank Wedekind's groundbreaking late 19^th-century

drama, the Tony Award winning musical Spring Awakening is a beautiful

thing overall and fully deserving of its success. But the show stumbles in its

one explicitly gay scene: the seduction of a teenage boy by one of his

schoolmates, which is played broadly for laughs in a way that cheapens the

moment. Would that director Michael Mayer had made another choice.

General Excellence Award to Off-Broadway Theater for

Serious Treatment of Gay Themes and Subject Matter

Stephen Karam's Speech and Debate is about a gay sex

scandal in a high school, set against the background of another scandal

involving the town's conservative Republican mayor. Among the characters in

Kate Fodor's 100 Saints You Should Know were a priest and a

teenager both struggling with being gay – but, refreshingly, the plot had

nothing to do with sexual molestation. That hot-button issue was tackled by

Neil LaBute in his flawed but gripping play In a Dark Dark House.

Terrence McNally's Some Men, an examination of gay relationships through

the decades before and after Stonewall, was also flawed but can still be rated

as its author's best work in years. In Christopher Shinn's Dying City,

Pablo Schreiber played twins, one of whom was gay. Clint Jeffries' The

Jocker was a moving drama of the dynamic among a band of hobos during the

Great Depression. And Delaney Britt Brewer's An Octopus Love Story was a

wonderful, bittersweet comedy about a gay man who weds a lesbian in order to

protest the ban on gay marriage.

Best Gay Musical Presented in Brooklyn

Admittedly, this category is narrow, but that shouldn't be

taken as a reflection on the winner. Yank! is about two men who fall in love while

serving in the Army during World War II.

The show certainly has its lapses, including an ill-advised dream ballet, but

it tells a compelling story with a lot of heart. And the limited-run Gallery

Players production featured an unforgettable performance by Bobby Steggert,

whose soulful, passionate, open-mouthed kisses with co-star Maxime de Toledo

left the audience breathless.

Special Events

Every year, like clockwork, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights

AIDS can be counted on to present fabulous shows as part of the organization's

invaluable fund-raising efforts. Broadway Bares is always a hoot, and

this year's edition at Roseland was one of the sassiest and sexiest ever. Note:

BC/EFA's Gypsy of the Year competition is normally held during the first

week of December; but this year, because of the stagehands' strike, it has been

pushed back to December 17 and 18 at the New Amsterdam Theatre.