Review: “8” Comes to L.A. Clooney, Pitt Lead An All-Star Cast In Play’s West Coast Premiere
-by MATT JAMIESON Dustin Lance Black’s play “8” made its West Coast debut with a one-night performance in Los Angeles last night. If you don’t live in Los Angeles, you still had a chance to catch it. The YouTube page of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) gave users a live stream of the night’s play. Despite the attempts of the defendants of California’s Proposition 8 to make the video recordings private, Black got around the injunction, requesting court transcripts of the trial in the 9th Circuit Court. His request was approved and the Oscar-winning screenwriter wrote a one-act 90-minute play based on the proceedings, and set around the closing arguments of the initial Perry v. Schwarzenegger case. And what a play it was. The West Coast premiere, directed by Rob Reiner, boasted an all-star cast to tell the story of the trial. Martin Sheen and George Clooney played the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Ted Olson and Martin Boies, and both delivered stellar performances. Clooney brought his signature charm to his role, while Sheen drew on his past role as Jed Bartlett on The West Wing, to deliver the gravitas needed for Olson’s attitude and actions. “Our fundamental rights cannot be taken away unless the state has a very, very fundamental strong compelling reason to do so, and it acts with surgically precision so that it takes no more than the compelling reason justifies,” Sheen as Olson said. “We’re talking about a group of individuals who meet every one of the standards for suspect classification. They are a minority, there wasn’t any dispute about that. It’s an immutable characteristic.” The plaintiffs, Kris Perry, Sandy Stier, Paul Katami and Jeff Zarillo, were represented marvelously by actors Jamie Lee Curtis, Christine Lahti, Matthew Morrison and newly out actor Matt Bomer, respectively. Each of the performances from this foursome were astounding, but Lahti and Curtis’s chemistry - especially when playing Perry and Stier talking to their sons, really drove the issue of marriage equality home. Also of note are the fantastic performances from Brad Pitt as Judge Vaughn R. Walker and Kevin Bacon as Proposition 8’s defense lawyer, Charles Cooper. Pitt, who was a last minute addition to the cast this past week, excelled simply by sitting behind the bench, and giving glances to both sides in the case. Bacon, meanwhile, was able to portray what the defendants of Prop 8 did not want us to see — no real defense for the case, and that they could not explain why the proposition was truly needed. And it wasn’t all truly serious either. Jane Lynch portrayed National Organization of Marriage (NOM) spokeswoman Maggie Gallagher in a hilarious CNN bit with equal rights advocate Cleve Jones. George Takei and John C. Reilly showed the ineptitude of the defense’s witnesses, Dr. William Tam (who said that if Proposition 8 failed to pass, gays would be allowed to “have sex with children,” a finding he claimed to have found online) and David Blankenhorn, who instead of defending traditional marriage, actually said adopting same-sex marriage would improve gay and lesbian households. My favorite performance from the night was one of the shortest. Glee star Chris Colfer as Ryan Kendall - a young gay man who was sent to reparative therapy against his will at NARTH (the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) because his parents did not accept his homosexuality. “My mother would tell me she hated me,” Colfer said during his scene as Kendall. “Once she told me she wish she’d had an abortion instead of a gay son. She told me she’d wish I’d been born with Down’s Syndrome or that I had been mentally retarded.” As a whole, “8” was one of the most moving plays ever - and it’s all real. Much like “The Laramie Project” - it relied on the performances and not the setting. Each actor, no matter who they were, brought true emotion to their role. The issue of marriage equality was brought to the forefront, and done so well by some of the United States’ biggest LGBT supporters - bringing maximum visibility to the fight for equal rights. To view the play “8” in its entirety, visit AFER’s YouTube page (the play itself begins about 30 minutes into the two-hour video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUG8F9uVgM More: http://www.thevitalvoice.com/lifestyle/57-lifestyle/589-review-8-comes-to-la -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
