Not to rag on Naked Boys Singing yet again, but I will. There are hundreds of great stories about the gay and lesbian experience that theatergoers have yet to see, yet unsuspecting patrons are forced to watch high-school level travesties that have all the shock value of a pig rolling in the mud. One show with naked men is fine, but when a season has around a dozen, that's cause to worry. However, the annoyance can subside in the meantime because Another American: Asking & Telling, a solo show by Marc Wolf and directed by the estimable Joe Mantello (Love! Valour! Compassion!), is just what the theater world needs right now. A searing portrait of sexual politics in the military conducted through first-hand interviews with military men and women, along with lawyers, politicians and scholars, all of different sexual backgrounds, it is a great example of an encompassing entertainment. Not really intended for a specific audience, it is a measured and intelligent rendering of a tricky subject, directed and performed with spareness and assurance.
The remarkable Marc Wolf embodies all of the subjects during his research, roughly twenty or so, and does so with a dexterity where he can jump from one character to the next with little confusion on the audience's part. Playing a wide range of personalities, Wolf never makes the mistake of creating false pathos. He paints in broad strokes at times but never makes subjects ciphers or jokes, allowing them the complications of conflicted people. Among the most arresting are a militant staff sergeant, named Miriam Ben Shalom, with an alarming sense of arrogance but an unmistakable dedication to achieving her goals and rights, a Bronx man who uses a childhood analogy involving the neighborhood "midget" (as he constantly refers to) to point out the homophobia that pervaded his life, and a devastated mother who learns that her son was killed as a result of being gay, not on the fields fighting his country as she would have expected.
There are a few more monologues than the show really needs, but Wolf gives these real-life individuals a striking alacrity. A nimble performer, he makes the show humorous, heartfelt and emotionally shattering without resorting to showboating or scale tipping. This is the rare political show that may thoroughly engage the un-political, since Wolf and director Mantello choose to explore the human side of this controversial issue. No bed-wetting liberalism or preachiness here; just a clear-eyed account of human fallibility.
