JERKER, OR THE HELPING HAND
I couldn’t believe I’d been assigned this play. I had no desire to watch two naked men jerking off onstage–my understanding of what this play was about. You can pay 50 cents at a peep show for that. But although Robert Chesley’s Jerker does indeed center around two naked men whacking off while exchanging fantasies on the phone (well, to tell the truth only one bares all), it is finally a funny, thoughtful, tender story that emerges from Bailiwick’s well-crafted production.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Jerker, the first play in Bailiwick’s gay and lesbian late-night series, is subtitled “a pornographic elegy with redeeming social value and a hymn to the queer men of San Francisco in 20 phone calls, many of them dirty.” That really says it in a nutshell. The play begins with one man making an anonymous dirty phone call to another. They both get off. Blackout. Thus begins a sweet, semianonymous romance conducted strictly by telephone. Although they never meet, Bert and J.R. eventually get well enough acquainted for each to begin to care about and need the other. In the process, various social themes get tossed about–predictably, AIDS and its effect on the gay community, but also homosexuality in general, the concept of free love, and the way values shifted between the 70s and 80s. The play provides no profound revelations on any of these topics. Nevertheless, what homosexuality has come to mean because of AIDS is a subject seldom aired onstage these days, and there is power in simply saying the words and hearing them said.
Moore has also gotten beautiful work out of his two actors, Ric Roe and Darren Stephens. Stephens has a boyish charm as the macho, gruff-talking Bert. His sweet, almost delicate manner sets off Bert’s mild sadomasochism and the actor’s own muscular presence. This balance works particularly well when he tells the story of his most memorable fuck, giving this crude but lovely chance encounter on the streets of San Francisco all the richness it deserves. Stephens’s sweetness in the scene when Bert is sick–he chooses to treat his illness as an ordinary cold–means his character seems free of any self-pity or overwhelming fear. (It also means the audience must guess where the play will go.) Stephens is ingenuous and natural, with or without clothes.
