While we were in Provincetown, JM & I went to see James Edwin Parker's play 2 Boys in a Bed on a Cold Winter's Night at the Art House. It starred Scott Douglas Cunningham as Daryl and Spencer Keasey (former gay porn star Spencer Quest) as Peter, two New Yorkers who spend an hour doing that one thing so few men ever do after sex: talking. The writing was fine, the acting was fine, and their naked bodies were even more fine. But what could easily have become a farcical take on a one night stand instead became moody and philosophical. This might normally work in a coffee house theater in the Village, but if you're vacationing in Provincetown (and potentially partaking of the frequent possibility of one night stands), this was not the play for you. Following their sexual encounter, Daryl is desperate for love and Peter is desperate for sleep. They are complete opposites, yet every gay man can understand from where each of them is coming. The one-hour play worked as a character sketch, but ultimately failed as a story. Like all theater, it invited the audience to act as the voyeur into their world. In this case it even went so far as to provide the all gay male audience with two hunky men parading in the buff for nearly twenty minutes (never a bad thing in gay theater). But the sullen tone that the play took ultimately stripped the audience of its participation, and in that sense left this theatergoer gratified, but unsatisfied.
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