At the end of Michel Tremblay’s play from the 1973, Hosanna stands before a nine foot three-sided mirror and declares “ Cleopatra is dead” as she removes her makeup. Hosanna turns in full frontal nudity as Claude and is embraced by lover Cuirette. Afterwards a young lady outside remarks, “It was great. I’m waiting for it to unravel a bit before I know why I think so.”
Although Tremblay’s groundbreaking exploration of sexual ambiguity now seems prolonged, seems a subtlely preaching two acter waiting to emerge from a theatrical closet in a more compact one act format, it is still decidedly relevant in the real world. Sexual identity and sexual relations are certainly contentious issues in the morally simple-minded and inhumanly discriminating rigidity of North America’s social climate.
There is much talk of stink in Tremblay’s play and set designer Michael Gianfrancesco heeds this cue with a set that looks worn and cluttered in dirty hues and cheap furniture. Some of Tremblay’s devices, like blending a dialogue into Hosanna’s second act monologue are quite effective. At the same time, the lengthy monologue starts to feel like a Taylor Swift cosmetic commercial on endless repeat of points already made -or perhaps that is a point the play is making.
Tremblay does want to teach his audience about the transvestite world and, if the play’s humanity seems too forced at times, we do have many subtle shifts both internally within these two characters and in their dialogue, and also the potent use of implication. Tremblay’s mot du jour is “shit” often repeated and its use adds despair to this theatrical brew.
Gareth Potter and Oliver Becker inhabit their characters with unobtrusive skill and in turn with and touching results. Potter’s Hosanna speaks with a lispy precision and almost elegantly negotiates his ass wiggles, cross legged posing, wrist flicks and graceful use of limbs. He complains about makeup that runs down his cheeks, a broken nail, and that it takes three hours to put “shit” on his face to look like Elizabeth Taylor. Oliver Becker plays Cuirette as a less overtly present fellow who implies in fewer words but as much as Potter an unstated complexity and richness of human life.
Their sharply played relationship has the give and take nuances of any pairing of two people, with alternating moments of submission and aggression, rituals of belittlement, control games, tenderness, and attack. “Every night for two years you have done exactly the same thing” says Hosanna/Claude. She/he also says “I need you to stay; I don’t want you to stay” so, yes, this is a very relevant play and under Weyni Mengesha’s sensitive direction, deeply moving. It asks who and what a human being is, gives us clues, and leaves us to resolve ambiguities.