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Alex Martinez and Chad Raven in Forbidden (Photo by Dennis Dean)
By Jan Sjostrom
What do you do when who you are threatens to make you an outcast and shatter your family?
That’s the question bedeviling Walter, a young man facing his homosexuality in Forbidden! The 104-year-old play is widely believed to be the first to portray an openly gay character as neither criminal nor amoral as well as the first in which a lead character comes as gay out to his family.
The show, written by Dutch female novelist Jo M. Van Ijssel de Schepper-Becker and translated by Laurence Senelick, hasn’t been produced since public outrage chased it off the stage after two performances in 1922 in Rotterdam. The former footnote in theater history has been given a new life in its American premiere at The Foundry in Wilton Manors by Ronnie Larsen Presents in association with Plays of Wilton.
As interpreted by Larsen, the show’s director as well as the company’s founder and artistic director, it’s a surprisingly contemporary work, infused with deep, readily relatable emotions.
The spare production relies principally on intense performances and Preston Bircher’s razor-sharp lighting. Jeff Walters’ set consists of a few white chairs and a table that stand out against a dark green wood wall. A contrast of dark and light, the setting suggests the black and white attitudes challenged in the play.
The playbill gives no time or place, inviting audiences to fill in the blanks. The only nod to the play’s early 20th century origins are costumes roughly suggestive of the period.
The 90-minute, intermissionless play opens with Walter clearly at the boiling point. Played with simmering tension by Alex Martinez, he can no longer bear concealing the reality he has struggled to deny.
Walter’s entire body curls in on itself protectively. The words strain at his lips and his mobile features betray his growing inability to contain them.
The family is in a bad way as well.
His mother, Marie, who is sensitive to her son’s every mood, and sister Lisa, who is engaged to Walter’s erstwhile best friend, Charles, suspect something is up with Walter but they don’t know what.
His father, Gerard, is harshly critical and dismissive. The parents’ marriage is fraying because Marie prefers the company of her artsy children to that of her plodding husband, and he feels left out.
Then Walter drops the bombshell that he’s gay in his mother’s lap. The shock ricochets through the family. How they absorb it and what Walter chooses to do now that he’s out propel the play.
The motherly Marie all but lives through her children, who expose her to ideas denied her by her upbringing. Sara Grant’s unstinting portrayal charts a sure-footed course through the character’s response to her son’s homosexuality, which covers more ground than that of any other character.
Overcoming her ingrained repulsion, Marie is wracked with anguish as she strives to act as peacemaker between her outraged husband and her increasingly independent son, who she fears is destined for a loveless and solitary future.
Seth Trucks withholds Gerard’s depths behind a façade of fury and resentment until a gut-wrenching scene toward the end when the actor unleashes his considerable skills to expose the man behind the mask.
As for Walter, Martinez drops his fidgeting and pained expressions as the character learns to stand up for himself. Glimpses of the self-possessed man he might become shine through in a truth-telling conversation with Charles, played with almost comic cowardice by Chad Raven.
Nicole Hulett’s Lisa simply wants to know what’s going on. She lacks personality, in part because she serves principally to flesh out the story.
The shame and secrecy that shrouded homosexuality in 1922 have diminished – though not disappeared – in wealthy Western cultures, if not in other parts of the world.
But the play is about much more than humanizing homosexuality. It’s equally about personal integrity and families, their complex dynamics and how they deal with crises. That’s what makes it contemporary as well as a milestone in theater history.
Forbidden! is a production of Ronnie Larsen Presents in association with Plays of Wilton. Running time is 90 minutes without intermission. The show runs through Sept. 27 at The Foundry, 2306 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors. Evening performances are held at 8 p.m. Sept. 2-Sept. 5, Sept. 9-Sept. 12, Sept. 16-Sept. 17, Sept. 19 and Sept. 23-26. Matinees are held at 3 p.m. Sept. 5-Sept. 6, Sept. 13, Sept. 20 and Sept. 27. Thanks to underwriting from the Warten Foundation, tickets are an affordable $10. For information call 954-826-8790 or visit ronnielarsen.com
