While sitting through Theatre Rhino's production of George Bernard Shaw's "The Philanderer", I kept trying to talk myself into caring about any of it. It seems to be one of those 19th Century plays where everybody's locked into rigid social conventions. The slightest flauting of expectation creates pandemic palpitating of breasts and the only way damage to the social body can be repaired is through marriage.
The program notes try to convince us that this stuff is relevant to the 21st Century. I don't see it. I can understand the historical argument -- that the way people confront difference or deviance in the context of their age has something to teach us and Shaw's writing is not without cleverness and I wasn't so bored and annoyed that I felt like walking out but neither did I ever feel engaged. I am not steeped in the taken-for-granteds of Shaw's times. I can't work myself up to caring whether the proprieties of his world are adhered to or not.
Why do I go to "queer" theatre? To see boys kissing.
Theatre Rhino, boys kissing please.
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