Margin Notes: Pride House

Pride House

Seen on: Wednesday, 1/24/24.

Gail Dennison, Jamie Heinlein, Calvin Knegten, and Raquel
Sciacca as Irene Gerard, Beatrice Farrar, Hugo Franc, and
Maxine Franc. Photo by Richard Rivera.

Plot and Background

The Other Side of Silence presents a world premiere of Chris Weikel's new play about Beatrice Farrar and her friends in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, right before the 1938 hurricane that devastated the vacation homes there and led to a fundamental shift in the demographic of vacationers on the island. Beatrice Farrar, her cottage Pride House, and her friends are among the barely-remembered but worth-retrieving pockets of Queer history, and nearly all the characters in this play are real people who were there in her house during the storm.

What I Knew Beforehand

Very nearly nothing, except that it took place on Fire Island before a hurricane.

Thoughts:

The walls of Pride House--so named for Beatrice Farrar's love of Jane Austen, but also granting the audience a knowing nod toward the future of Cherry Grove's population--are painted as a mural: a beautiful endless horizon of a gentle wave cresting toward a sandy shore, with benign puffs of white cloud overhead. They match the back wall of Evan Frank's evocative and poetic scenic design, the "actual" outdoors, as if there is no barrier between the island paradise outside and the haven inside. The glassless windows perched on slender frames--no actual protection from the outside--reinforce this impression. When the first act closes amid the rising storm, the sounds of a tree falling and window glass shattering pierce the air. But the glass was never there. The protection was never there, and we have been always outside and exposed, waiting for a storm to rip everything away.

At first I worried this metaphor would stand for the collapse of Beatrice's peculiar little paradise: a menagerie of queer writers, theater folk, and actual royalty. But it seems what's actually coming to an end is the idyll treasured by Beatrice's neighbors--wealthy families from Long Island who summer in the nearby cottages but worry about this new influx of flamboyance and color. Beatrice's intent is to try to build a bridge between her treasured friends and her can't-get-rid-of-them neighbors, luring the nosy Mrs. Gerard in with the young prince and princess staying with her, and with her friends in show business. "I used to be one of us," she explains, "but the longer I stay here, the more I feel compelled to be one of them." When that entente fails, she turns instead to how she can use her money and influence to broaden the scope of making Cherry Grove a welcoming place for her large chosen family.

The peculiarity of the timing is telling, for those of us who think to notice. It's mentioned offhand that the visiting children are Jewish. The war in Europe is still a year away, but the harsh restrictions on Jewish existence in Europe had already been going strong for some years (and yes, people everywhere knew about it). Seeing these cheerful children prattling in French and partying with the grown ups, one cannot help but think that had they stayed in France they would soon be slaughtered. This is just history, this is just the order in which things happened. In 1938 a hurricane devastated Cherry Grove, damaging most cottages but somehow leaving Pride House more or less intact. This haven for Beatrice and her queer (and Jewish) community weathered the storm, but we all know there are worse storms coming soon.

Though the performance I saw was, by all reports, a "very Wednesday" show (there was more air than there should have been between lines and delaying cues), the cast still has some standouts, including a sly scene-stealing turn by Jake Mendes as Stephen, stopping the show with his delivery of the line "ha ha ha ha ha." Jessica DiSalvo brings charisma and a delicate tact to the Broadway starlet Natalia Danesi Murray, Tom Souhrada is delightfully camp as the exuberant Arthur Brill, and leading them all with warm practicality is Jamie Heinlein as Beatrice. I admit to feeling conflicted about Ben Philipp's costume design: while the wardrobe silhouettes are beautiful and the footwear a bevy of perfection in terms of style, I am thrown by how pristine every item is: no sign of wear or weathering. I want the clothes to feel as lived in as the relationships between the characters are.

There's very little online information available about Beatrice Farrar and her friends, but it's clear from the events of the play that she was a key player in developing Fire Island into the summer mecca for queer people that it's become. A lot of pre-Stonewall queer history, especially involving people of color, has been forgotten or intentionally erased. It's good to tell these stories, to remind ourselves of, as Matthew Lopez calls it in his play of the same title, our inheritance of queer culture stemming back and looking forward.

***

Running: Now playing at The Siggy @ The Flea Theater (TOSOS) - Opening: January 18, 2024. Closing: February 10, 2024.
Category: play
Length: 2 hours, 30 minutes, including intermission.

Creative Team

Playwright: Chris Weikel
Director: Igor Goldin
Designers: Jordan Schildcrout (Dramaturg), Evan Frank (Set), Ben Philipp (Costume), David Casteneda (Lighting), Morry Campbell (Sound), Jesica Terry (Production Stage Manager), Cat Gillespie (Asst. Stage Manager), Robin Kaufman (House Manager).
Cast: London Carlisle, Gail Dennison, Dontonio DeMarco, Jessica DiSalvo, Desmond Dutcher, Jamie Heinlein, Alex Herrera, Aaron Kaplan, Calvin Knegten, Jake Mendes, Patrick Porter, Raquel Sciacca, Tom Souhrada.

Jake Mendes, Patrick Porter, Jamie Heinlein, Alex Herrera, Aaron Kaplan,
and Tom Souhrada as Stephen, Thomas Farrar, Beatrice Farrar, Brad, John
Mosher, and Arthur Brill. Photo by Richard Rivera.