Cast: Regan Adair, Casey Robinson, BJ Cleveland**, Steve Iwanski, Scott Meek, Mark Shum, and Bryan Donovan**

** Member of Actors Equity Association

They're all men. They're all gay. They're almost all white, almost all American and they're almost all in the theater. But somehow the characters in Love! Valour! Compassion! attain a kind of universality, similar to that achieved by Chekhov in his bleak Russian villages and Horton Foote in his small Texas town. Well, with full-frontal nudity, dry humping and drag thrown in.

Terrence McNally's comedy-drama about eight gay friends who gather at a country house in upstate New York over three successive holiday weekends won the Tony Award for best play in 1995. Its first Dallas staging has been a long time coming. But Uptown Players' production is worth the wait. It's terrific in every respect.

Be prepared for an epic evening: The three-act play clocked in at 3 ½ at Friday's opening. But the richness of the story holds up over the marathon length. There are all three of the titular qualities – with "valour" spelled as it is in homage to the British characters – as well as jealousy, faith, hilarity, infidelity, prayer, skin, voyeurism, death, humiliation and men in tulle.

Gregory Mitchell (Scott Meek) is a famous dancer-choreographer and owner of a house in Dutchess County, which he shares with his blind boyfriend, Bobby (Regan Adair). They love to throw their doors open for holidays. These include musical-comedy acolyte and costume designer Buzz (B.J. Cleveland); a couple together 12 years, Perry (Bryan T. Donovan) and Arthur (Mark Shum); John (Steve Iwanski), an extremely disagreeable English pianist; and Ramon (Casey Robinson), a Puerto Rican dancer and John's current squeeze. Mr. Iwanski does double duty as James, John's sweetly feminine twin brother.

Several of the characters are HIV-positive or have AIDS outright, and their struggles, though underplayed, keep the ephemeral nature of these idyllic weekends in the foreground as we move from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July to Labor Day. This is the year when, as one character tells us in the all-around narration that guides us through the action, "everything changed – for good, for bad, forever."

The production has a wonderful look. Keith and Andy Redmon's set is simple, elegant and moodily evocative under Julie Simmons' lighting.

Under Doug Miller's direction, the performances are strong across the board, but a couple stand out. Mr. Cleveland's Buzz skillfully mixes drollery and flamboyance, and there's room in his range for sincerity as well, when love unexpectedly comes along. And Mr. Adair's spiritual but less-than-saintly Bobby is completely fascinating; Mr. Adair convincingly portrays blindness, and at a moment when Bobby gets some terrible news, his reaction makes the blood go cold.

During most of Love! Valour! Compassion!, however, one feels swept up in human warmth. What were we waiting for? Perhaps it was the moment when this particular group, like their fictional counterparts, were all ready to share the same house.

It might not seem like a risk now, but it was. Uptown Players, which asserts as its mission the performing of plays that reflect the diversity and life experiences of the gay community, picked a no-brainer with “Love! Valour! Compassion!” After all, the Broadway version won a Tony for best play, and playwright Terrence McNally is easily the most famous and respected chronicler of gay life on the American stage. And there’s nudity, too, in case you hadn’t heard. Who wouldn’t want to see it?

But audiences wanting to see a play, and a company delivering on those expectations, are not the same thing. “Love! Valour!” has its problems. It relies heavily on understanding obscure pop-culture references, like Gertrude Lawrence and Glenda Jackson.

The characters can be problematic, too. Buzz (B.J. Cleveland) is often bedecked in flavorful costumes and carries a backpack burdened by countless stray pieces of flair — he can come off like a flamboyant refugee from T.G.I. Friday’s. And Perry (Bryan T. Donovan), spends most of the time being prickly, while John (Steve Iwanski) is not only mean but a humorless bore. And what of peaceful, handsome — and blind — Bobby (Regan Adair), who “sees” beauty where others cannot. Is McNally kidding? Do people buy such heavy-handed symbolism anymore?

Well, yeah, it turns out. At least they do when a cast and director (Doug Miller) are as talented as this one. Whenever the play teeters on the brink of going wrong, as if by magic everything goes right. They achieve that delicate balance between humor and hard-won pathos.

The action takes place in a rambling, turn-of-the-century mansion outside New York City, owned by Bobby’s partner, Gregory (Scott Meek). One summer, they host half a dozen friends: Perry and Arthur (Mark Shum), celebrating 12 years together; Buzz; John and his twin brother James, who don’t get along; and John’s boyfriend-of-the-month, Ramon (Casey Robinson), a hot, young, predaceous dancer.

There’s cheating and intrigue and gossip and many, many drama-queen moments. Hmmm, eight scantily clad gay men sharing a spacious home with plenty of bedrooms and no clear sightlines to the lake — what did they expect?
The production surpasses expectations in ways I still haven’t fully figured out. Maybe it’s Julie Simmons’ expressionistic lighting or Miller’s deft direction. But I mostly credit the actors.

Adair was beginning to fall into some old habits recently, but after “Killer Joe” and this, he secures himself as a resourceful and compelling stage presence. Cleveland was born to play Buzz, which he does without becoming annoying (Jason Alexander was not so lucky in the movie). Robinson seduces the audience in much the way Ramon does his housemates. Iwanski’s performance is a mixed bag: A haunting butterfly as James, but too plodding as John.
The play skirts along its clichés on its way toward speaking universal truths: Almost everyone can relate to some character or situation.

It may not be accurate to call this Uptown’s best production ever — this season alone would feel like choosing a favorite among one’s children. Suffice it to say, no company has been as consistently excellent in 2004 as Uptown. And “Love! Valour!” is just the latest evidence that proves it.

McNally's play takes us to a summerhouse by a lake in Dutchess County, two hours north of New York City. Here we find seven gay men; some are in relationships, others are not. We are shown the highs and lows within their lives as friends and lovers.

Gregory (Scott Meek), a well-known choreographer, owns the summerhouse in which all the others have come to soak in the holiday sun. Greg's lover is Bobby (Regan Adair), a blind man who is content with his life until tragedy and trust change his peaceful world. Perry (Bryan T. Donovan) and Arthur (Mark Shum) are a couple who have been together for over twelve years. John Jeckyll (Steve Iwanski) is a composer with only failures on his resume. He brings along a boy toy, Ramon (Casey Robinson). Ramon also happens to be a dancer who greatly admires Greg's work. The single one in the group is Buzz (BJ Cleveland), an HIV positive guy who worships the world of musical theater. Later in the evening we meet John's twin, James (Iwanski) who brings happiness to Buzz's life.

Having only seen the lackluster film version, this was my first observance of McNally's play on stage. In this play, we swim, paddle, and survive within the dramatic waters of love, betrayal, AIDS, friendship, loyalty, anger, and death.

While it is immensely entertaining, Love! Valour! Compassion! is slightly taxing, clocking in at three hours and 40 minutes at Saturday's performance. Some of the characters are given more dramatic weight than others, so a few are just not fleshed out enough. I wanted more background information and history to help fill the holes in their characterizations. There are times within the piece that it seems McNally was lost and didn't know where to go with the emotion or how to connect the dots with plot, purpose, and character. I also feel that the insert of a joke just to break up the tension wounds some of the dramatic scene work. Instead of allowing the painful reality or organic truth to sit there on stage and in the audience, we have instead a joke blurted out. A couple of times it does harm the dramatic intensity that the actors are achieving. Where I feel McNally drops the ball the most is in the handling and the writing of the one minority character, a Latino dancer. Here, he is used as a boy toy , the brunt of jokes and, in the case of his boyfriend, sick repartee. Thankfully, the actor portraying this role steers clearly away from stereotyping the character.

These minor problems can be overlooked because Uptown Players has mounted a production that is quite simply a masterpiece of dramatic theatrical achievement. It is beautiful, funny, dark, heartrending, erotic, and sentimental. There is male nudity, but it is never distracting or bothersome. You actually forget it's even there because the strong acting is overpowering. The nudity practically becomes an afterthought.

This production marks the finest production Doug Miller has ever helmed as a director. His staging is just marvelous: flowing, organic, smart, and honest. It never feels awkward nor showing a lack of conviction. Each scene is directed with clarity and delicate truth. Miller has his actors move, talk, and act with naturalism and determination. He keeps the characterizations as true, normal, natural men. Only one character is slightly flamboyant; the rest stay masculine. I really admire and like that. It gives respect and dignity to the gay community. Nothing sickens and angers me more than seeing gay men portrayed as flaming queens who would lisp on a D.

Miller's pace is vigorous. The piece glides with ease and tempo to reach each of its conclusions. Miller wisely keeps the laughs moving along, stopping long enough to let the dark pathos of pain and hurt soak in. This director truly shines with this project.

His designers aid Miller to perfection. Keith and Andy Redmon's set is a raked platform with an upper deck. Right smack in the center is a large hole, which is used to symbolize the lake. The set works like a charm to create various rooms and sections of the house and its surroundings. The set is showered in simple yet quite effecting lighting, designed by Julie Simmons. Her creation of cornflower blue night sky and twinkling stars with a large, glowing moon is especially gorgeous to watch.

A special note of critical praise goes to sound designer Virgil Justice. His sound effects for the tennis game, the nighttime noise of crickets, and the sounds of bodies hitting water all add a great deal of enjoyment and realism to the production. In such an intimate space as the TRAC, you can hear the clicks of the tape machines or the breaks within the tape itself. Not here. Justice has masterfully crafted a solid sound design that gives the production substance.

The cast of seven is a mixture of familiar faces and newcomers within the Dallas/Fort Worth acting community. A trio of actors, seen in productions all around the metroplex, have always delivered solid work, and here they once again succeed: Regan Adair as the blind Bobby; BJ Cleveland as musical theater fanatic Buzz; and Mark Shum as Arthur, who is half of a yuppie couple. All three actors provide wonderfully entertaining performances and equally marvelous dramatic work.

Steve Iwanski and Scott Meek are new to Uptown. Iwanski does double duty as the gay twins John and James. One twin is an evil, bitter, horrendous composer, while the other is a soft, warm, and loving man who is battling AIDS. Iwanski does really wonderful work with both roles. You loathe John with his belligerent behavior towards everyone and every thing, but you adore James and his humor.

Meek is charming and very likeable as the choreographer Gregory. However, he lacks intensity and anger when he finds out that his lover has had an affair. He seems too timid and not unnerved by the situation. Nonetheless, Meek is quite entertaining.

Casey Robinson is fantastic as the Puerto Rican dancer, Ramon, giving an exceptional performance that is a mixture of anger, eroticism, and determination. The actor uses his face and body to express with intense truthfulness his emotions and thinking. It's a first rate performance.

Of the various couples on stage, it is the relationship between Bryan T. Donovan and Mark Shum (Perry and Arthur) that is the most believable, consistent, and honest. Throughout the play, both actors show physical displays of affection that reflect that they are always on the same page as a couple. Their chemistry is the strongest of the evening as well. Both men are engaging, heartwarming and completely in sync with each other. Speaking of Bryan T. Donovan, it is his superior performance that made the evening for me. Donovan's stage presence is intense and glowing. But it is his organic subtext that is astounding to watch unfold. You cannot take your eyes off him as he changes emotionally throughout the evening. Not once does he drop his characterization. You see anger, pain, jealousy, and love flash across his face as his relationship with Shum's Arthur is tested and stretched to the max. Donovan has a very expressive face that can create both laughter and heart wrenching tears. His final scenes in act three are poignant, heartbreaking, soothing, and exquisite. His emotional, painful scene with Cleveland's Buzz (who is brilliant in this scene as well) is powerful and compassionate, and shows the amazing range that Donovan possesses. He delivers the best dramatic work of the evening and is mesmerizing and unforgettable.

Uptown Players' mounting of Love! Valour! Compassion!! is the best play that I have ever seen in all my years living in this metroplex. It seared into my heart, bringing both laughter and tears. But it also brings respect, dignity, and honesty to the gay community. This play and its company show with clarity and honesty what we all as humans go through when it comes to love, life, and death.

This is a tour de force production that will stay with you days later. It cannot be missed, period.