Woodstock isn’t the only
anniversary being celebrated this year; the summer of 1969 was also marked by 
the Stonewall Riots, an event seen by many as the birth of gay liberation. That uprising ignores years of work by
a lot of brave forward-thinking folk whose activism, while discreet, embodied
the age-old frustrations of men and women living under threat from the law and
society simply because they preferred their own sex.
A new play, The
Temperamentals (a
code name for homosexual in the early 1950s), explores the efforts of a small
group of gay men who, fed up with indignities inflicted by society and the
police (like blackmail and especially entrapment, which seems to be making a
comeback) founded the Mattachine Society in 1951. Led by Harry Hay, a school teacher who blossoms into a
modern-day Larry Kramer, they struggle to build what was arguably the first
post-war gay rights organization in the U.S (the short-lived Society for Human
Rights dates to 1924).
The playwright Jon Marans has given us a docudrama
that is frank without stinting on the humor, or the ripe parallels to what
passes for gay activism today. The
personal tragedies, the in-fighting, the legal injustices and triumphs, the
obstacles (often by other homosexuals)—all are there, heightened by the elegant
direction of Jonathan Silverstein and a quintet of performances too good to be
true: Thomas Jay Ryan (as Harry Hay), Michael Urie, Tom Beckett, Matthew
Schneck and Sam Breslin Wright are all masterful.
But time is running out—The
Temperamentals, after numerous extensions,
is closing August 23rd.
Let’s hope some enterprising film producer buys the rights, for the
story of Mattachine is one that deserves the ears of a larger audience.
The
Temperamentals is at the Barrow Group Theatre, 312 West 36th
Street, 3rd Floor. Photo of Michael Urie and Thomas Jay Ryan by Joan Marcus.