Why do gay men love musical theater? There are various “deep” critical-theory-type answers, I’m sure. At least part of the reason, though, has to be simply that musicals are at least a little bit fun for everyone (show me a child who hates Mary Poppins and I’ll show you an unholy demon-spawn), but they’re deprecated if you want to be masculine. So all boys start out liking showtunes, but for the most part only the gay ones get to keep liking them as they get older.
I’ve never been a particularly rabid fan of musical theater, although I certainly grew up watching the classics over and over — and there was that momentous realization in seventh grade that I might be “different” because I found myself absolutely adoring West Side Story.
Still, I’ve lived in New York for five years and haven’t managed to make it to more than a handful of shows. Nor had I been to a piano bar until last Saturday, when my boyfriend took A White Bear and me to Marie’s Crisis in the Village.
I always thought a piano bar had to be elegant — a classy sort of karaoke, like the Diane Keaton “Seems Like Old Times” scene in Annie Hall. Marie’s Crisis is not anything like that. It’s a divey basement bar, where as the bouncer checks your ID you can hear everyone in the crowd singing out, oh what was it, “Feed the Birds” or something. Inside there’s a piano surrounded by crummy board for resting your drink, a bar where drinks are sold in the back of the place, and a couple of tables in a corner, though everyone’s standing.
Sitting behind the piano was Dexter, a middle-aged, barrel-chested man with thinning white (blond? probably not) hair and a few earrings. He seems to know every show tune. Every. Not just the piano parts, but the lyrics, which he can belt out if the crowd is unsure. Dexter played a mix of older and newer stuff, things that everyone knew and rarities for the real aficionados.
Everyone once in a while, when Dexter came back from a short break, he’d give one person a solo, but for the most part the singing was a group effort. On some of the verses of the more obscure songs there’d be only a couple of people who knew the words, but I thought it was amazing that there was never a song for which nobody knew the words. And then there were the blockbusters where everyone knew the words. Those were fun. A room full of homosexuals singing, “You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma O.K.!” at the top of their lungs is an awesome spectacle.
The crowd was interesting. Younger than I’d expected (lots of guys in their 20s and 30s). There were plenty of women, too, some of whom had clearly come to sing and others of whom had brought their boyfriends along for no apparent reason. The boyfriends clung to the girlfriends as talismans and made loud, obnoxious conversation that made me want to shoo them out.
In all, a good time, although if you go I recommend staying away from the well gin. I found I knew more tunes than I expected, and I surprised myself and my party by knowing all the words to “Our Love Is Here to Stay” — I vaguely recall being taken with the song in high school and making it a point to learn the lyrics. “The radio, and the telephone, and the movies that we know / may just be passing fancies / and in time may go. But, oh my dear…”
The boyfriend called the experience “gay church,” and that’s a fair description. It’s a church that welcomes everyone, though, if you’re willing to learn the liturgy and refrain from obnoxious talking. It’s easy, though. As Dexter sang to us, “When we read we begin with A, B, C. When we sing we begin with Do, Re, Mi.” If that put a tune in your ear (and I know it did), you’ll be fine.
” I recommend staying away from the well gin.” Good advice almost anywhere you do your drinking.
Oh but this was from the bottom of the well somehow. I’d swear, looking back through a haze of 2 a.m. nausea, it sits back there behind the bar in bottles that simply say GIN in big black letters under a barcode, without even a lunge at some quaint name to suggest the English countryside.
I think I spent an evening sipping gin saltydogs made with this particular brand. The funnel and gallon of ammonia sitting next to the bottle of “gin” should be a dead giveaway.
My longstanding theory about why gays like showtunes is that they are sentimental and often address issues like tragically-doomed longing, the fear of other people discovering one’s secret feelings, or the joy of finding someone with whom one can share uncommon pleasures. Add to that the circumstance that most of these songs were learned when we were 10-17, either by doing theater ourselves or going to shows, during that time when we are just beginning to realize who we are and what we want, and learning that those desires may not be considered socially appropriate by others. If you went so far as to be involved in theater at that age, it usually meant you’d never be Big Man on Campus or Homecoming Queen (although ours, in both cases, were theater people), but you were surrounded by people who let you try on all these feelings without making fun of you.
We didn’t have many (any?) students actually come out in HS theater, but many of my HS theater friends have since come out. In a weird way, being in theater was like already being out–not that people said “You’re in theater, so you must be gay” but in that being nakedly emotive onstage was a way of showing yourself to the world. Here I am; I don’t really know who I am, but this is it. And oddly, it’s only through a script and a fictional scenario that we can show ourselves.
I like Dave’s idea that all people love showtunes, but straight guys have to learn to pretend they don’t. I remember crying and crying after opening night of the first real show I did in community theater when I was 11, and saying to the college-aged girl who was the lead, “I wish everyone could feel like I do right now.” She hugged me and started singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Cheesy, sure! But what that night meant to a weird little girl with no friends who was ugly, shy, and anxious, to get on stage and be treated like a member of a community–I’ll never forget that.
My longstanding theory about why gays like showtunes is that they are sentimental and often address issues like tragically-doomed longing, the fear of other people discovering one’s secret feelings, or the joy of finding someone with whom one can share uncommon pleasures.
The first two items comprise a narrative that often gets applied to “why gays like opera” and “why gays like Judy,” and though I don’t find those unconvincing, it’s always gotten under my skin that our communal likings had to be so tied up with tragedy. So I’m really glad you included the last item. I like this version. And really, I think it makes more sense, this less martyrous story of gays and tunes, because I bet there are young queers who have come out without much fear and still love a good cover of “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
I hesitated about including tragedy, but when one is a teen, non-standard longings are tragic, no? I include myself in the unloved-outsider role here.
In general, I’d say the appeal for older gay men may be related to tragedy in a deeper way–loss of family, loss of religious community, relationship to AIDS in the 80′s, etc., but, as Dave says, it was great to see so many young guys there. I guess I’d say young gay men may have a different relationship to theatrical music than older gay men, but the great thing about it is that we’re all singing together, not talking about why we’re there.
Speaking of loss of religious community, this happened.
I have long wished that I grew up learning / loving show tunes. My parents weren’t really theater-going people, so I have a big blank space where knowledge of shows should be. I have never seen West Side Story, either on stage or on screen. I don’t know the songs in Oklahoma! or South Pacific or Les Miz or any of those other staples of Broadway. I feel unsophisticated when people make reference to them, and slightly embarrassed. Perhaps I should take a Musical Theater Appreciation 101 class, to address these shortcomings.
I do, however, know every single word, guitar hook, french horn solo and shriek of Jesus Christ Superstar. My parents had the 1970 double album of the original cast (including Ian Gillan, lead singer of Deep Purple, as Judas) and we wore that sucker out.
#7: That is totally awesome.
#7: Thanks for sharing that. So good.
Sounds like a peachy time, Dave. One of the happiest memories of my old crowd in Chicago was a dinner party that went well into the wee hours: our host, whom we called “Evil Santa” for his propensity to break out the perfect substance at the perfect moment, presented us with a tray of Harvey Wallbangers and “H.M.S.Pinafore” cranked full-blast. Damned if all those blitzed queens couldn’t sing along with every rapid-fire word.
LP: They did “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”! You would have felt included.
Rachel: G&S is really advanced. I think the crowd would have been a lot quieter if that had been on the playlist.
AWB and I would have started improvising extra verses of G&S, such is our skill at strictly metred patter.