SECRETS Bailiwick Repertory
Rebecca Ranson’s Secrets is being produced as part of Bailiwick Repertory’s gay and lesbian series, but its two female protagonists are not necessarily lesbians. Theirs is a highly personalized relationship that transcends the facile label of “close friends” (as in “just close friends”) and the serial monogamy that passes for modern “lesbian lifestyle.” (The production contains some schoolgirl-league cuddling and kissing, but nothing to make the censors twitch.) If the love in this play doesn’t speak its name, it’s because there’s no name inclusive enough. When Phoebe and Rosetta say “I love you” to one another–for that matter, when Leland says the same words to both of them–they are not talking about going steady or about jumping anybody’s bones, but something far more complex.
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The plot is simple and episodic. Each of three transvestites–Marlene Delorme, Judy Goose, and Lana Lust–enacts in turn a scene in which she stands trial for the “crime” of being a drag queen. The other two actors play the roles of the prosecuting attorney and the surprise witness. In between the court sessions we see the three men in their dressing room, changing costumes and chatting among themselves until the stage manager’s voice summons them to the stage/courtroom.
Drag Queens on Trial has its serious sides, but it is not merely a jeremiad, nor is it a polemic of familiar views. The irreverent humor of the three queens’ offstage palaver mitigates the somberness of Gilbert’s message (during a discussion of the hygienic properties of condoms, for example, Delorme says, “And you can accessorize! Those things come in all colors and patterns to match anything”). Even the finale leaves us on an upbeat note: “To condemn these men is to condemn everything brave, alive, and dangerous,” announce the three protagonists, who then proceed to dance and lip-synch their way through Judy Garland’s “Get Happy.”
