by Brad Fraser
The public preview that night was much smoother and the audience laughed more easily than the night before. The actors became more confident and did indeed open up and let the audience more into their performances.
I sat out the opening performance of the play, as I often did when the demand for tickets exceeded the seats available. Instead I smoked a joint and took half a lorazepam before going to meet the cast, crew and audience at the after-party at the bar/restaurant Byzantium on Church Street. The party was in full swing when I arrived. I moved through the crowd smiling, shaking hands and exchanging cheek kisses with well-wishers as I searched the crowd for Randy. I finally found him at the back of the restaurant talking to the Davids.
“How’d it go?” I asked, searching his eyes, which were evasive. My stomach turned to ice.
He said, “I’m not sure they got it.”
“Did they laugh?” I asked.
“Some of us.”
“Were they bored?”
“No one was bored. But not everyone was happy.”
David Gale handed me a beer and gave me a hug as he told me he loved the play, adding, “I’m Jewish and gay so I understood the concentration camp footage, but not everyone did.”
I smiled and kissed him. “Fuck them.”
David Wright gave me a dubious smile.
The next morning the Globe and Mail was just outside the apartment door, as it always was.
The headline on the Arts section’s front page read: “Brad Fraser: Yesterday’s Man.”
PART EIGHT
THRENODY
I HAVE HAD A GREAT MANY bad reviews in my career; I have had reviews that reeked of homophobia and fear, I have had reviews that denounced my existence and denied the existence of the characters on the stage, I have had reviews that commented on my physical appearance, but I had never had a review as toxic as this one. But my greatest sin according to this reviewer was including the concentration camp footage behind Martin’s monologue. For daring to make this parallel, I was denounced as I had never been denounced before from a number of quarters.
That a supposedly educated theatre reviewer would not know the history of gay men in Nazi Germany was insulting. I remember seeing Martin Sherman’s amazing Bent staged in Edmonton, one of the best plays about the incarceration of gay men along with the disabled and other minorities. At the end of the war, when the camps were liberated, everyone was freed—except the homosexuals, who were sent to mental hospitals and prisons. Other people who were incarcerated would insist that, for the homos, that was justified.
In many ways the gay press found me even more problematic, and many of their responses seethed with malice for my having spoken of our darkest secrets in a public place. Barebacking, passing the virus, drug use, sex and substance addiction, depression, despair—these were things they loved to write about in the neighbourhood weekly, but they should not be graphically staged in a place where straight people could judge us.
The Toronto Star gave the show a fair but mixed review, although it too was shocked by the concentration camp footage. A few out-of-town papers gave it strong, positive reviews, but the consensus in the city was that I had produced a major flop by going just one step too far in my attempts to shock the public.
On the second night I took a seat in a corner at the back of the house after the audience had been seated and watched the show. At the end of the first act, where the monologue with the concentration camp video happened, I felt a ripple of energy in the audience that pulled many of them out of the play completely. I realized the images made the monologue redundant. Horror stacked on horror creates indifference. I didn’t want to appear to be cutting the clip because people disapproved of it, but I also wanted my message to come through. I realized there were some who would never hear what I was saying as long as it was accompanied by that imagery. So I cut that video. I also cut others, to tone down the busyness of the show. It didn’t bother me at all to do this, as I often changed distracting or problematic technical aspects of shows after opening night.
I sent an eloquent, informative letter about the history of gays in the Holocaust to the editor at the Globe, which they published. I took the reviewer and the Toronto press in general to task for their historical ignorance, then deconstructed the homophobia in the review. While my statement was admired by some, it created a darker backlash from those I’d called to task.
A few days later a series of letters and articles appeared in the press further condemning the play, which was selling out despite the first reviews. There was an article about how lame using video in the theatre had become. There was an article about how nudity and sex in the theatre had become tiresome. “Journalists” called me at home to ask how it felt to fail. Variety ran a scathing review by a local reviewer whose closeted but predatory behaviour I’d written about a number of times. Martin Yesterday was the talk of the town. But not in a good way.
Three days after opening, Iris Turcott called me. “Come over to my place for coffee, honey,” she croaked. “We’ve gotta talk about this shit.”
Iris had been the dramaturge on the play since its inception as a stage piece. When I got to her apartment in a city co-op she was, as always, sucking on a cigarette in her dining room.
“What the fuck?” I asked as I slipped into the chair across from her, pulling a can of Diet Pepsi from my bag and popping it open.
Iris stubbed her half-smoked cigarette out in an ashtray on the table. “That cunt at the Globe—that was an attempt to really hurt you with the big-time arts donor crowd. It was dirty.”
“You saw my letter?”
“Fucking great. Fuck that cunt.” (“Cunt” was one of Iris’s favourite words and she applied it liberally to all people.)
“I still don’t get it.”
Iris pulled another cigarette from her pack and lit it angrily. No one angrily lit cigarettes like Iris Turcott. It was awe-inspiring. “You left us out.”
“Who?”
“Straight people, stupid. Everything’s gotta fucking be about us. We don’t care what queers do. And we certainly don’t want to be told their deaths are our fault through our fucking indifference.”
It had not been lost on me that Martin Yesterday was my first play with an all-male cast. In fact, in all of my earlier plays the queer-identified characters were always outnumbered by the straight-identified characters.
I said, “None of them even mentioned it was at a gay theatre for a gay audience.”
“Of course not,” she snarled. “Most of them don’t know what context is.”
We both laugh/coughed heavily, sounding like Joan Rivers and a harbour seal.
“They hate me.”
Iris nodded. “They’ve hated you before.”
“Not like this,” I said.
“So what’re you going to do?”
“I need to rewrite it. Open it up a bit. Tone it down. For Edmonton.”
She nodded. “Smart. For Edmonton.”
Ben Henderson at Theatre Network had asked me if he could produce the show even before it opened in Toronto. I needed the money and agreed, although I thought the play would be an odd fit and a hard sell in Edmonton with its small queer community.
“Do you think having an all-male cast is an issue?” I asked Iris.
She shrugged. “A lot of your audience are women, so I don’t think it helped.”
“What if I changed Manny”—the character who was the lead’s best friend and artistic partner and the only straight guy in the show—“to a woman and made her Jewish?”
Iris snapped her fingers and laughed. “Great.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe the exploding dicks are unnecessary in future productions.”
“Is that as bad as they say it is?”
She lit another cigarette. “Jesus. I don’t think anything could be
as bad as they’re making out—but you enjoy yourself too much, honey. You don’t care what they think. You make jokes at their expense. What did you expect?”
I hugged her and left to get to work on the rewrite.
* * *
—
Things had become very quiet since Martin opened. Theatre friends who used to call regularly had stopped; guys at the gym who’d formerly engaged me in meaningless conversation now smiled wanly and didn’t chat. Then the national press picked up on the fuss and stories began to appear in other cities. “New Fraser Play Bombs” was the consensus, followed by lurid descriptions of the play’s sex and emotional violence.
I was surprised by how emotionally affected I was by all this. It wasn’t depression so much as a sort of sick realization of just how precarious my success was and how vulnerable it was to elitist, homophobic people.
Every morning when I walked out of the apartment to go about the day’s work I’d say to myself, “Stand up straight. Be proud. Keep your head up. You’ve earned the right to fail.”
One morning the phone rang at an hour so early it couldn’t have been anyone who knew me.
“Is this Brad Fraser?” A man with an English accent.
“Who’s this?”
“My name’s Braham Murray. I’m the artistic director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.”
His accent made him hard to understand. I said, “What’s your name?”
“Braham. Like Abraham without the A.”
This was interesting enough to get me out of bed. “Hi, Braham.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“Only in the most general sense,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”
He said, “We did Poor Super Man at the Exchange last season and it was a tremendous hit. A few years before that we did Unidentified Human Remains and it was also a great hit.”
I could only vaguely recall hearing about these production. There’d been so many. “Thanks,” I said. “I heard great things. How did you get my number?”
“Your agent gave it to me. Are you working on anything new?”
I laughed, perhaps a tad bitterly, and said, “My new play just opened.”
“I take it you’re not happy with it.”
“I’m quite happy with it. The press is not.”
He laughed and asked me what was going on. I told him the whole story. When I was done he said, “When Joe Orton’s Loot bombed in the West End I suggested he bring it to Manchester and we’d see if we could improve it.”
I said, “Didn’t that production go on to be very successful?”
“Yes, it did.”
I became even more attentive. I said, “I’m a big Orton fan.”
He said, “I can tell. Remains and Poor Super Man are brilliant plays, mate. Seriously brilliant. I had this urge to call you to say if there’s anything you want to write and you need a producing theatre for it, I’d like to offer that to you.”
This entire phone call was like a lightning bolt from heaven. “Wow. Thanks, Braham. That’s amazing.”
He said, “Why don’t I come over and see the show. Then we’ll meet.”
I said, “Why don’t you.”
Braham arrived in Toronto just a few days before the show was scheduled to close. He was a short, thick-lipped man with a grizzled lower face, sparkling eyes and a confidence I’d rarely encountered in directors. From the start we had an amazing rapport.
After seeing Martin Yesterday he said, “It’s a wonderful show. Complex and mercurial. Bracingly offensive. They’ve gone off you after a few years of adoration. It’s not unusual.”
I said, “Thanks.”
Braham said, “What if we do it at the Royal Exchange next season and see what happens?”
I said, “I would be most grateful.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Then we shall.”
He flew back to Manchester, and a few weeks later Shain had closed the deal for the Royal Exchange to produce the British premiere of Martin Yesterday.
The final performance of the show at Buddies was a Sunday matinee. I slipped in at the last minute and took a seat at the back of the house. It was the first time I’d been back since instituting the video cuts after the second show. I was uncertain: had the reviewers been right? Would it be that bad? But after the lights went down, the integrity of everyone’s work pulled me in and held me for the next two hours. The rear-projection roller-coaster ride worked fabulously. The actors had proven strong in the face of adversity.
Ironically, it would be a newspaper that took me in a new direction.
Kenneth Whyte, editor of the newly launched right-of-centre National Post newspaper, and incidentally brother of my boss so many years ago at Walden’s, hired me to be a roving arts writer, commenting on whatever was happening across the country. I was paid a good rate. They covered my travel costs when I flew to Edmonton to write about the Fringe Festival and when I went to Stratford to write about the festival there. People I’d known and worked with for years were suddenly treating me like “the press,” sucky and obsequious when I was around and they were hoping for a mention, and resentful and cutting when I was out of sight.
Writing about the theatre left me conflicted. On the one hand, it brought more attention to a discipline that was often ignored. On the other hand, it put me in a position where I was forced to judge and qualify the work of my peers, which never turns out well. I was aware of how close I could come to being the thing I hated most. After spending ten days running around the city interviewing celebrities for the Toronto International Film Festival, things felt even more complicated. When I agitated for assignments that were less connected to the arts and pitched political columns or stories, the phone stopped ringing.
Thankfully Remains was being produced at a lot of colleges and universities, and they often invited me to speak. After the first two invitations I’d told Shain to accept if they were paying, but to stipulate in my contract that I would not see the show. I was happy to impart whatever wisdom I could and share amusing anecdotes, of which there were many about the show by this point, but I couldn’t stand to sit through another production of the script.
* * *
—
One night I was noodling in my sketchbook when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was deeply accented and not one I recognized. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, although his tone was very urgent. As I asked him to repeat himself, I realized I was speaking to a friend/fuck buddy of Tad’s, a Russian hooker with a huge dick who Tad saw whenever he could. I had gotten a strange vibe when we’d been introduced and tried to steer clear of the guy. He finally slowed down and enunciated well enough to tell me he was calling from Wellesley Hospital, where he’d left Tad in the emergency ward moments earlier. I asked him what happened, if there’d been an accident. I hadn’t heard from Tad in months.
The Russian said, “It is AIDS.”
I said, “Will you stay until I get there?”
The Russian said, “I want no part of this,” and hung up.
Tad was in a glass quarantine cell. A nurse handed me a mask, waited for me to put it on, and let me in.
Tad—or the skeleton of Tad—was sitting up in bed looking at me with a strange, birdlike alertness. There were dark purple rings under his eyes, and his cheeks were dark and hollow. Tad said, “I told Ruskie not to call you.”
I shrugged. “He did. How long have you known?”
Tad’s eyes gleamed strangely. I was wondering if he had one of the many brain infections that were related to the disease. He said, “I quit my job. Threw my uniforms down the garbage chute. People were knocking on the door but I wouldn’t answer.”
I sat in the chair by the door. “Did you see a doctor?”
“Why? They can’t do anything. They couldn’t do anything for Bart.
” Bart was his ex-model boyfriend who’d died just before Tad had come to New York for the opening of Remains.
I said, “There’s AZT, the cocktail they’re trying—”
He shook his head vehemently. “I’m going to die.”
I said, “Tad, people aren’t dying so fast anymore. There are all kinds of new treatments—”
“I’m dying,” he said. “I want to die.”
I stared him, eyes stinging. “You’re not going to die.”
He let out a long breath and leaned back in the bed. He said, “If you’re going to cry you have to go out in the hall to do it.”
I said, “I’ll cry later then.”
Eventually, haltingly, I got most of the story in a disjointed fashion. Tad figured he’d been infected when he was with Bart—“We weren’t always careful”—but had refused to see a doctor about it. He dodged all talk of AIDS, even avoiding the nightly news for fear it would be mentioned. When his body started to break down he had no idea what was happening. Then his behaviour got weird and he didn’t know how to control it. The Russian, who was the only person Tad saw at the time, grew concerned when he found Tad wandering the hallway of his condo building.
A nurse finally came in and gave him a series of pills. When she left I said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
He said, “Brad, don’t—”
I said, “I’m coming back tomorrow,” and left.
I was right. Tad didn’t die.
In fact, when I went back to see him the next day he was looking considerably better. That crazed gleam had left his eyes. There was an IV in the top of his hand. No one told me I had to wear a mask. His voice was weak but his colour was better. When I asked, the nurse assured me he was responding well to the medications they were giving him. After she was gone I asked him, “Still want to die?”
“Did I say that?”