thoreau

Two more reviews came out today. They are both really wonderful!

Friends Are Forever: Sweet, Sexy & Fun
By Eryka M. Fraczek
Published: August 28, 2008

Friends Are Forever, a comedy now at New Conservatory, takes a dip into the “Sex and the City” part of town with a different threesome, James, Steve and Mike, played respectively by Dann Howard, Gerrad Bohl and Leo Lawhorn, and their respective lovers, George, Bill and Roger (Christopher M. Nelson, Brian Patterson and Robert McDiarmid). Director Ben Randle follows playwright Tom W. Kelly’s three couples as they explore friendship, love, fidelity, infidelity, and occasionally awkward repercussions.

The couples take an emotional and physical romp through the tulips, the brush and other places we all know and sometimes would rather not. It’s hot, witty and wry; it’s sultry. And to add that extra hop, it’s choreographed to boot. Three friends, James, Steve and Mike, are in an emotional dilemma, or euphoria in Mike’s case, over their current main squeezes, George, Bill and Roger, who, as it turns out, are acquainted with more than just their partners. Dann Howard’s James is delightful as the vanity-ridden, self -pitying, histrionic, and elitist piece of upper-crust that must somehow survive the guilt-ridden life he has fashioned for himself. Gerrad Bohl’s Steve is delicious as a sumptuous dumb blond who knows no limits when it comes to fraternizing freely. Leo Lawhorn as Mike, is the “guy” with a mid-life crisis. He is straight-faced and sly, in-your-face about pretty much everything. Nelson and Patterson as George and Bill, the lovers who wouldn’t “work out” or “meant nothing,” are definitely enough to make the eyes wander and to wonder how things got that way.

Randle’s organically seamless direction portrays intertwined lovers and the hardships of intertwining. Staging is tasteful and intertwined within the scenes. Playwright Kelly displays a delightful sense of humor and the wit to carry it off. He has written many plays, and his work is frequently featured at New Conservatory. His full-length Significant Others ran in their 2004-2005 Pride Season.

It’s sweet, it’s sexy, it’s cozy, it’s fun, and it’s worth a ride into the tulip patch, vicariously or otherwise. Friends are Forever plays through Sept. 21 at The New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. Tickets ($18 to $40) are available by telephone at (415) 861-8972 and online at www.nctcsf.org.

'Friends Are Forever' at NCTC
by Richard Dodds

Published 08/28/2008

In under two hours, Friends Are Forever gives you a full season of sitcom episodes. Or at least a mini-version of each week's antics in a serial series not unlike, say, Friends. All it needs is a catchy theme song. Wait, it has that too, as Bette Midler belts out "Friends" during the final bows.

But Tom W. Kelly's new play is 100%-certified gay, and despite its discretion in terms of nudity and language, it still talks about sex, especially the casual and store-bought variety, in an abundance that ABC, CBS, and NBC wouldn't touch with a 10-inch pole.

Kelly is an SF playwright whose works have been seen on several area stages, and his newest effort is opening New Conservatory Theatre Center's 2008-09 Pride season. Its main aim is to generate laughs, whether through snappy word-play, bitchy insults, or a leather-accessorized striptease, and the play delivers steadily, if not robustly, in its goal.

Using a familiar setup, Kelly opens his play with a trio of close friends sitting around a coffeehouse table as they discuss their specific boyfriend issues and debate the rules of romantic revelation to each other � 24-48 hours after a first date is the consensus. There are few references in the play to suggest that we are in 2008 � and an oddly retro health crisis is introduced mainly as a joke generator � but running gags built around cell phones and ringtones at least provide a technological timeframe.

Ben Randle has directed the multi-scene play with dexterity, using the cast members, who stay in character, to make the necessary set changes for the segments that could each have its own TV Guide plot capsule: "Double Dating � Mike and Roger discuss the pros and cons of monogamy," or "Massage Therapy - Steven inadvertently gives James' new boyfriend an erotic rubdown."

At the center of the ongoing romantic maelstroms is the character James, given to melodramatic self-pity, scabrous wit, and a dual standard when it comes to the rules of outside-a-relationship engagement. In Dann Howard's comically mannered performance, I imagined Kelsey Grammer's Frasier doing an impersonation of Noel Coward.

While the other five characters (playfully essayed by Gerrard Bohl, Leo Lawhorn, Robert McDiarmid, Christopher M. Nelson, and Brian Patterson) all have intertwined sexual, social, and/or romantic issues, it is James' diva funk after a boyfriend's indiscretion that pulls the characters together for what they call an abstention intervention. But it takes a gimmicky medical crisis, a quickly dispensed-with allergic reaction to shellfish, to bring about a happy ending. Cue the Midler song.

Friends Are Forever will run at NCTC through Sept. 21. Tickets are $22-$34. Call 861-8972 or go to www.nctcsf.org.