As Hauser and his pitbull campaign manager Lynch, Hogan and Ted Koch prove to be villains that theatergoers love to hate - which may be all that's really needed for them to be. Roberts certainly looks the part of boy-next-door Jerry, but unfortunately, he rarely reveals much below the character's surface. Caffey, though spirited throughout, delivers tentatively, often seeming unsure of her lines. Pearthree offers beautifully refined portrayals of Harmony and Hauser's ailing wife. In both his primary role of Anton and in a secondary role of the judge at the trial, Burton mines the material for each ounce of humor. Smith's staging - which, despite Bill English's clever scenic design, unfolds awkwardly as the play shifts from location to location - only enhances theatergoers' sense of how overextended the play is. Unfortunately, the story has a cartoonish soap opera quality that feels stretched thin during the course of the two and a half hours of the play. There are even moments when Loeb's work seems to be inspired by Tony Kushner's soaring fantasia, Angels in America.
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The interlocking pieces of the play bring to mind Alan Ayckbourn's lengthier trilogy, The Norman Conquests, while dance breaks, in which the entire ensemble is sometimes clad in black topcoats, stovepipe hats and fake beards, bring to mind the absurdism that's found in the trial sequences of the musical Chicago. This farce of a play is said to be 'perfect for anyone who thinks that we all take even the most serious issues a little too seriously,' City Lights claims.
Hauser's actions - and gay-bashing agenda - are at the center of another portion of the play, while the third section focuses on how his rival Regina Lincoln (Stephanie Pope Caffey), a sitting Senator who's also African-American, uses Harmony's case for her own political ends. In Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party a rural third grade teacher 'outs' one of the greatest American presidents at a Christmas pageant and is put on trial. One segment focuses on fictional New York Times reporter Anton Renault (Arnie Burton), who arrives to cover the trial, and the romantic relationship that develops between the writer and Jerry (Ben Roberts), a young man who runs a coffee shop and is also son to a one-time Senator and now aspiring Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Hauser (Robert Hogan).
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The play is written in three parts that can be performed in any order and together give theatergoers a full picture of events in a small Illinois town where fourth grade teacher Harmony Green (Pippa Pearthree) finds herself on trial after presenting a school pageant in which Abraham Lincoln's possibly gay relationship with law partner Joshua Speed is brought to the fore. Loeb's agenda is both comic and earnest, and his dichotomous tracks combine to create an evening that while fitfully amusing is also tiring, particularly in director Chris Smith's uninspired staging. The hypocrisy of media, the Right Wing, and even gay activists are broadly and unsubtly skewered in Aaron Loeb's ambitious new work Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party, now playing in the Acorn Theatre in Theatre Row. Pippa Pearthree, Arnie Burton, Ben RobertsĪnd Ted Koch in Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party