matthew’s alibi

There are a lot of contenders for “best moment” of this past weekend’s AIDS Walk Los Angeles, but my vote goes to this picture.

Our team, organized by the always-irreverent Sean (”it’s not a party ’til you’ve pissed off a lesbian,”) Hetherington was made up of a whole bunch of lawyers, at least a couple of my favorite bloggers, and said Sean, a stand-up comedian.

The team name was “Faggle Rock,” (which was funny, until you considered the prospect of passing a collection bucket around your über straight work place with your team name emblazoned on the side…)

Of course there were the inevitable fundamentalist protesters. I’ve got my own share of nutty political and social ideas, and I’m always happy to see crackpots on the streets holding forth. Whether I agree with them or not, I’m heartened to see people who believe strongly enough in something to stand up for it.

But really. One would think AIDS Walk is pretty difficult to find fault with, (jeez guys, have you forgotten the Ryan White Story?) …but these folks protest funerals, so its not like you can take them too seriously in terms of reasonable political discourse.

Our favorite relief-shuttle bus driver - an imposing black lady who laid on her horn to boost people’s spirits for the duration of the walk - came up with one solution: the last time we saw her, in the homestretch of the walk, she had parked her bus strategically in front of a lone protestor, blocking him from sight.

As for Faggle Rock, Ryan had gotten some dollar store devil costumes, horns, tails and little red bowties, which gave our team a snappy (if playfully demonic) uniform look - and the horns made it easier to find one another in the crowd of 30,000 walkers.

Plus, the costumes came in handy when we encountered the protesters. At the corner of Beverly and La Brea, where a scant two fundamentalists waged their holy war of ideas, teammate Tara impulsively hopped under the AIDS Walk cordons and danced gleefully, complete with horns, tie and tail, in circles around the fundamentalists, to much delight and applause from passing walkers (as well as the brief consternation of the protester’s AIDS Walk volunteer, who seemed to be on “handler” duty, to keep folks from being confrontational.)

Thing was, Tara looked like she was having so much more fun than the protester. It was a beautiful, absurd response to an ugly, absurd idea. It was a joyous kind of impromptu protest, that made the fourth mile of the walk seem a little bit shorter.

The walk was a success - the biggest ever in terms of participants, and in terms of money raised. And, it’s not too late to donate…! (or, click the photos to donate through Tara’s page)

(Thanks to Ryan for the photos…)

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the LA premiere of the Rabbit Hole, currently onstage at the Geffen Playhouse. I’d heard mixed reviews of the New York production - and a lot of people who said Cynthia Nixon’s performance was what made an otherwise run-of-the-mill show.

I’m happy to report that’s not the case. The Geffen’s production, sans Nixon, is well conceived, well acted, and well directed. But perhaps the best thing about this altogether exceptional show is the writing. David Lindsay-Abaire turns a worst-nightmare situation - the accidental death of a young couple’s son - into a human, accessible, and occasionally a very funny drama.

In the aftershow Talkback session the Geffen hosts on Tuesday nights, the actors revealed that in the playwright’s note to the cast, which they didn’t receive until a week or so into the run, Lindsay-Abaire urged the cast to play up the show’s manic humor, and downplay the weightier issues. The weighty stuff is unavoidable, so the comedy is essential. Cast member Tate Donovan said that Lindsay-Abaire had told them there were only two places in the script where it was okay for the characters to cry.

The result is surprisingly buoyant, where the pathos of the worst-thing-you-can-imagine is revealed not with gnashed teeth and wrung hands, but by the absurdity of moving on from something totally devastating. Fundamentally, it is a play about how people survive (or struggle to survive) in the face of tremendous, unexplainable loss. And it succeeds, and even offers a few graceful moments of hope, without ever forgetting the humanity of its characters, or the scale of their loss.

Lindsay-Abaire is no stranger to the lighter moments, having previously written the absurdist comedy Fuddy Meers. Rabbit Hole is his first foray into drama, and by most accounts, a successful one - Rabbit Hole received 5 Tony nominations this year, including Best Play. For my money, the script is more deserving of the Pulitzer than last year’s unexceptional Doubt (also getting it’s west coast debut this month, at the Ahmanson).

The players are well-cast, with particularly strong performances from leads Tate Donovan and Marin Hinkle. Last night was Hinkle’s first night with the show; she’s joining the run for its final week only, but you wouldn’t have known it from her performance. Hinkle played her emotionally challenging part terrifically.

Joyce Van Patten and Missy Yager ably supply welcome comic relief. Van Patten’s performance as a kooky mother who ineptly comforts her grieving daughter is particularly well done.

Rounding out the cast is legit theater newcomer Trever O’Brien, as the bright young teenager whose driving accidentally killed the couple’s son. O’Brien is excellent in another helluva difficult part, and he’s pretty handsome, too (is that tacky to say in the context of his performance as a child killer?).

My only complaint about the show was the music. The plink-plinky piano score sounded like a Thomas Newman warm-up exercise, and was a distraction from a script that was good enough not to need any accentuation.

That’s a minor quibble for a show that was, in all other respects, exceptional. There’s one week left to go down the Rabbit Hole, which is, without question, one of the best trips you can take on an LA stage this year.

Check it out: tonight’s Guerrilla Gay Bar insurgency is the featured event on la.com today!

Once a month, the Guerrilla Gays take over a straight bar somewere in Los Angeles. We don’t tell them we’re coming, we just show up en masse and make the place ours for the night. Tonight is going to be our fifth takeover - we always schedule them for the second Friday of the month. Tonight is the spooky Halloween edition, and it’s going to be a costume party, but for those who don’t feel like getting suited up, there’s the option of dressing “like a straight person.”