Beautiful Thing

FROM THE ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION

THEATER: A 'Beautiful' season ender
Actor's Express' take on gay-themed cult classic is pure balm

BYLINE: WENDELL BROCK; Staff
DATE: June 7, 2002
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: Preview
PAGE: Q4

REVIEW

"Beautiful Thing"

8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays, except 2 p.m. Sunday and June 30 and July 21. Through July 27. $10-$25. Actor's Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W. 404-607-7469.

The verdict: One of the sweetest romantic comedies to grace the city's stages in a long time.



In Jonathan Harvey's "Beautiful Thing," the play and the movie, there's a certain scene in which Jamie, the fairer and softer of the two English lads at the center of this story, rubs lotion on the back of his friend Ste. The intimate moment is defused by the fact that Jamie keeps pattering on about the balm -- it's his mum's peppermint foot rub -- and the fact that Ste is marked with purple-black bruises from his father's beating.

And so begins this sweet and tender romantic comedy, now playing at Actor's Express, about the first blush of love, the queasy vertigo of being different and the place of compassion in a world in which anger and abuse are the more common responses. When Jamie's mother discovers he is gay, she is upset not so much because she's narcissistic but because she knows what a tough road her son has chosen. When she asks him why he's taken a shine to Ste, Jamie gives the only true answer he knows: "Because he's good to me."

That the drama starts on a note of unhappiness and conflict and dissolves into a picture of unalloyed kindness and love is probably why it's such a cult classic among those, particularly gay men, reckoning with their identity. Even Leah, the black next-door neighbor with an affinity for the music of Mama Cass and a sense of her own otherness, learns to accept herself and forgive her antagonists. Indeed, it's a "Beautiful Thing" all around.

As good as the 1996 film may have been, I found this theatrical telling to be infinitely richer. In his directorial debut as artistic associate of the Express, David Crowe not only acquits himself handsomely, he has also discovered a remarkable young performer in the person of Clifton Guterman, who plays Jamie.

In his first professional acting engagement, Guterman -- who is teamed with the very fine ensemble of Brian Crawford (Ste), Shelly McCook (as Jamie's mother, Sandra), Scott Warren (as Sandra's oleaginous boyfriend, Tony) and Aprylle Ross (as Leah) -- simply walks away with the show. With his pitch-perfect Brit-lad brogue and his impeccable comedic impulses, he at once nails the part and stamps it with originality. Under the shy, bespectacled and decidedly unathletic demeanor is a wag with a wicked sense of humor and a heart of gold.

Aside from a few crocodile tears, Guterman gets nearly every detail right -- from his "Cagney & Lacey" imitations to his comic retort to the gay personal he reads aloud to Ste. Crawford, an Emory University student who was a standout in the recent "30 Below" project with Out of Hand Theatre, more than holds his own as Ste (that's short for Steve). Along with his Emory classmate Raife Baker and now Guterman, Crawford is one of the rising stars on the Atlanta horizon.

As always, McCook (who will be replaced June 27 with Joanna Daniel) is terrific -- a daft but irascible mom. How absurd that anyone could be obsessed with Mama Cass, she scoffs at Leah. The minute she says that one shouldn't laugh at the obese singer who (as legend has it) choked to death, she erupts into the most raucous belly laugh. It's hysterical. Warren, a Dad's Garage Ensemble member, captures the slimy Tony without even seeming to try, while the high point of Ross' performance as Leah is her tragicomic acid trip.

By opening his season with "The Laramie Project" (about the Matthew Shepard case) and closing it with "Beautiful Thing," Actor's Express artistic director Wier Harman has achieved a kind of symmetry that makes the sum of the two shows even more moving. In thinking back over the two productions, I couldn't help thinking how Shepard's life might have been different if he'd found the same compassion that visits Jamie and Ste.

Unlike the fact-based "Laramie Project," "Beautiful Thing" is an urban fairy tale with a happy ending. Onstage, we see Jamie fulfill the dream that eluded Matthew Shepard: to be held in the arms of another man -- and not be mocked or crucified for it. Actor's Express gets it just right.


from CREATIVE LOAFING

Queer as folk
Beautiful Thing maintains its status as a gay touchstone

BY CURT HOLMAN

The amazing thing about Beautiful Thing is how it makes a radical statement out of puppy love. The scruffy 1996 film of a romance blossoming between British teens only breaks ground because they're boys of high school age. Otherwise, Beautiful Thing proves a charmingly conventional take on first love, and in part by avoiding heavy-headed gender politics, the film became a transcontinental sleeper hit.

Because many gay people don't come out of the closet or aren't comfortable with their sexuality at the age of Beautiful Thing's young leads, the movie has become a touchstone of identification and what-might-have-been wish fulfillment. This is the case with Jonathan Harvey's original stage play, which has been imported to the States thanks to the film's success.

If you've seen the movie, the Actor's Express production, directed by David Crowe, will hold few surprises. The play's five characters have somewhat more expanded roles than onscreen, making the work akin to a "director's cut" of the play script. Beautiful Thing offers a sweet love story and realistic slice of impoverished London life, although it's not a very substantial work.

Young neighbors Jamie (Clifton Guterman) and Ste (Brian Crawford) each have difficult family lives. Ste's bullying brothers and abusive father never appear on stage, but we do glimpse the bruises that stripe Ste's back. Jamie never knew his father, but he frequently butts heads with his tart-tongued single mum, Sandra (Shelly McCook). And Sandra has hostile relations with Leah (Aprylle Ross), the black, pregnant teen who lives next door and is obsessed with Mama Cass.

With walls as thin as cheesecloth, the three adjacent flats hold few secrets. Rochelle Barker's set provides an unattractive but realistic rendering of the housing estate's front landing. In some places the walls have a worn, nearly transparent appearance, making the flats look like a row of storage lockers. The walls open up to reveal Jamie's bedroom, where some of the play's most poignant moments take place.

Ste begins spending the night at Jamie's to escape the neverending rows at home. At first, Guterman and Crawford have the easy interplay of adolescent pals, but they become touchingly tentative as they discover their attraction to each other. Guterman's Jamie is the more sexually forward, while athletic Ste is more shy and self-conscious.

Most of the play takes place in front of the flats. Some of the profane chat involves the lore of Mama Cass, as the characters wonder what kind of sandwich she choked on and whether her voice really improved after a blow to the head (which Leah tries to duplicate). Before entering, you should study the theater's posted glossary of Britishisms, as the South London slang and references to English television get thick. But Shelly McCook thrives on them, with her Sandra alternating from broadly clownish to sympathetically maternal. (After June 23, she'll be replaced by the estimable Joanna Daniel.)

Beautiful Thing is subtitled "An Urban Fairy Tale," which might be Harvey's way of justifying his rosy depiction. Sandra ultimately proves supportive of the two boys, but we never see the reaction of Ste's family, making the drama seem unbalanced waiting for a shoe that never drops. Nevertheless, the opening night crowd wholly embraced it, snapping fingers along with the Mama Cass music, whooping at double entendres (even when none were intended) and in some cases, tearing up at the end. Beautiful Thing may not be a complex or ambitious piece of theater, but for many audiences, it hits close to home.

Beautiful Thing plays through July 27 at Actor's Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 5 p.m. $20-$25. 404-607-7469. www.actorsexpress.com.