Live Performance Review

The Glass Closet Shatters
By Kelly Arnes

Thomas, played by Kelly Miller, after talking to his pastor and coming out to him attends on the pastor’s recommendation a behavior modification appointment. During the visit, the doctor tells him to hit a pillow with a racquet and yell at his parents. After weakly complying with the wishes of the doctor, he snaps under the stress and yells “This is ridiculous!”

Those three words sum up the plot of the hour long one act play, which featured a cast of five people. The play consisted of 15 characters and one narrator. The plot was not clearly developed as the staged reading unfolded. Of the 15 characters, nine of them had the same amount of stage time, which didn’t help the plot to develop.

The technique of writing a multiple character per actor play requires a skill or finesse for writing characters that are different enough so that the audience does not get confused as to which character the actor is portraying at any given time. The playwright, Ben Harpe, did not show that skill with his play The Glass Closet. Each actor played at least two characters, unfortunately, it was not clear which character was represented unless another character had said the name. Cooper Wilson plays both Pastor Eric, an outspoken adversary of homosexuality, and Kyle, a flamboyantly gay character on a sitcom. These characters appear to have completely different personalities, but from the first time Pastor Eric stepped on stage, he was vibrant and flashy, giving off a gay vibe while giving a sermon admonishing homosexuality. The other characters were similar as well; Gina and Candice, played by Sam Grobbel were stereotypical, present day, valley girls, and unless the narrator had mentioned that the play had moved to the set of the sitcom, it was unclear as to which character she was playing.

The narrator, John Deisinger, helped with scene location during the first part of the production, but after the first couple of scenes he was silent until he announced that the play had ended.

The script was full of gay jokes, and lines that a teenage girl, high on hormones, would say or scream, such as “OMG!” and then continuing to tell a friend about a date she had just set up. The meaning of the title was revealed about half way through the play in a conversation between Thomas and Ruth in which Ruth says “he’s in the glass closet” and then explains that the glass closet is “being in the closet but everyone can see you.” This was a helpful line, because the meaning of the title was unclear until this point.

The set was poorly constructed, with boxes set up as both chairs and loveseats. The director did a poor job of blocking; Thomas during his appointment had his back to the audience during the entire scene, causing the audience to be unable to read his facial expressions. Without the facial expressions, the mood is taken out of the scene. The overall feeling was reminiscent of the behavior modification appointment, “ridiculous.”