Marin Ireland and Anna Foss Wilson in ‘The Beebo Brinker Chronicles.’ Photo: Dixie Sheridan
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By Jonathan Warman
Friday, October 12, 2007
The early ’60s are very much in the air these days. “The Beebo Brinker Chronicles” surveys that era’s Manhattan from the angle of the Greenwich Village lesbian underground of the late ’50s and early ’60s.
It’s based on a steamy series of lesbian pulp novels actually written between 1957 and 1962. Since then, three generations of gay readers have embraced author Ann Bannon’s melodramatic, noir-ish coming-out tales.
These characters may be self-loathing by today’s standards, but Bannon portrayed real gay people in a more rounded and humane way than any other fiction of that era. This was a time when the gays and lesbians of Greenwich Village began breaking the old rules, setting the stage for the Stonewall riots of 1969. And Bannon’s descriptions of lesbian love-making are so viscerally sensual that they have been the catalyst for untold sexual awakenings.
In “Beebo,” Beth and Laura, secret lovers in college, go their separate ways after graduation: Beth marries and has children (much like Bannon herself), and Laura moves to New York. They pine for each other, but find themselves entangled in the web of the titular Beebo Brinker, a loquacious and wildly confident butch barfly with a soft spot for young lesbians fresh off the bus.
Co-authors Linda Chapman (“Gertrude and Alice”) and Kate Moira Ryan (“25 Questions for a Jewish Mother”) amazingly condense three Bannon books into a dramedy that runs just over 90 minutes. They gently kid the pulpy melodrama of Bannon’s dialogue, while always making sure to render her sharp psychological portraits with lots of flesh on their bones.
Personally, I would have liked a little more over-the-top gusto and a slightly heavier wink in the performances than director Leigh Silverman has elicited from her superb cast. To my taste, David Greenspan portrays older, affluent gay man Jack with just the right juicy fruitiness. Carolyn Baeumier strikes a similarly frisky series of stances as several characters, notably the busty, trashy Lili and embittered, blowsy novelist Nina.
Anna Foss Wilson endows the titular super-butch with abundant swagger and tremendous self-confidence. Marin Ireland plays the seemingly less interesting Laura with great feeling—Laura is the character who changes the most in the course of the story, and Ireland is equally convincing as a naïve girl and an utterly sophisticated woman.
“The Beebo Brinker Chronicles” is already consistently selling out its off-off-Broadway venue, and a move to a larger venue is in the works. This is richly deserved: Every theatergoing lesbian and gay man must see this sexy and historically important show—and straight audiences will find it very entertaining and enlightening as well.
“The Beebo Brinker Chronicles,” 7 p.m. Mon. & Wed.–Sat., 5 p.m. Sun. at the Fourth Street Theatre, 83 E. 4th St., $20, 212-352-3101, beebobrinker.com.
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