Pop Smart - Some Men has all the luck at Actor’s Express

It’s fitting that Some Men, Terrence McNally’s play about modern gay history in New York, should itself feel like a turning point for plays about gay life. Alliance Theatre associate artistic director Kent Gash directs a superb production for Actor’s Express, the best show so far in the first season of the playhouse’s new artistic director, Freddie Ashley. Ashley’s program notes for Some Men are worth quoting in some detail:

I believe that Some Men is a landmark of gay theatre. McNally already penned Love! Valour! Compassion!, one of the most important plays about the gay experience to emerge from the 1990s. In that work, he brilliantly captured a snapshot of the needs and concerns of the gay community at that moment. And what’s more, that play has maintained its relevance for more than a decade since its premiere.

The Express staged a terrific production of Love! Valour! Compassion! about 10 years ago. Like one of Anton Chekhov’s classic comedy-dramas, LVC used three holiday weekends at a vacation house over a single summer to create a microcosm for the gay (male) community. With Some Men, McNally significantly expands his canvas to encompass the evolution in homosexual acceptance and relationships going back to the 1920s, although the vast majority of the play takes place in the late 1960s and later.