Today, the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationally, seems an apt day for my annual census of gay characters on Broadway. At a time when LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage, are under attack, it probably shouldn’t be too surprising that there has been a fall-off from the 2023 (pre-Trump) Broadway record, when I identified nine Broadway plays or musicals running during Pride Month, most of them new that season, that featured out and unmistakable LGBTQ+ characters. Most are no longer around. There are only two new ones this year..
It would be ludicrous to argue that Gay Broadway is on the wane, when more than a dozen Broadway shows are participating in a free block party tomorrow celebrating Pride Weekend, and one of the brightest and most feted new stars on the Great Bright Way is Cole Escola. There is no denying that Broadway remains what it long has been — an industry that employs LGBTQ people; a community that has served as a refuge; and an art form that’s offered a pioneering showcase for LGBTQ characters and their stories. But the showcase fluctuates. And at the moment, attention has turned to “the rise of the Broadway ‘bro show’ “— shows that appeal to male theatergoers, featuring clearly hetereosexual characters, some of whom are rather undeniably homophobic (“Glengarry Glen Ross,” anyone?)
Below is an alphabetical listing of the currently running Broadway shows with queer characters – not all of them explicitly, unmissably so.
May (currently portrayed by Michael Ivan Carrier), who lives outside gender binary labels, launches into Britney Spears’ hit “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” which of course was about her age; May makes it about gender transition. May and Francois (Nathan Levy) kiss, realize their attraction, and sing the NSYNC hit “It’s Going to Be Me” (pronounced May — get it?)
One could argue that the musical number “Turn It Off” is an allusion to being in the closet, especially since the chorus boys performing the number are wearing red-sequined satin vests.)
The homosexuality in this production of Cabaret is largely implied, in the decadent dance numbers, and with such deliberately double-entendre as In the song “Money,” when the emcee smirks:
If you happen to be rich,
And you feel like
A night’s entertainment,
You can pay for a gay escapade.
We are meant to understand that Clifford Bradshaw (Calvin Leon Smith), the writer who falls for Sally, is bisexual. (The actual Anglo-American writer upon whose autobiographical writing “Cabaret” is based, was actually famously gay.) But even this is treated coyly:
SALLY: Are you homosexual in any way? Bobby said he thought you might be.
CLIFF: Bobby?
SALLY: One of the boys at the Club. He said he met you in London at the Nightingale Bar
CLIFF: The Nightingale Bar?
SALLY: Is it possible?
CLIFF: I guess – anything’s possible. I’ve been to lots of bars
SALLY: And did you and Bobby have an affair?
CLIFF: Did he say that?
SALLY: He implied it.
CLIFF: I see.
SALLY: Cliff – if you don’t mind – I should like to withdraw the question. Because – really – it’s none of my business. I think people are people, I really do, Cliff. Don’t you? I don’t think they should have to explain anything.
As in “Cabaret,” there is an insinuation of homosexual characters, but even more elusively. “Welcome, you gorgeous collection of reprobates and rascals, artistes and arrivistes, soubrettes and sodomites, welcome to the Moulin Rouge,” impresario Harold Zidler (currently portrayed by Austin Durant) declares upon his entrance. Some critics have described Zidler as a gay character, but I missed that. Among the featured characters, Baby Doll (Jeigh Madjus) is explicitly a young drag queen. (In an interview shortly after the musical debuted on Broadway, Madjus said portraying the character was an adjustment: “I had to go buy heels at TJ Maxx for my audition. It’s taken me two years for me to feel comfortable dancing in heels.”)
Many argue that “Oh,Mary” reflects a gay sensibility — which one can most safely define as a show to which gay theatergoers are eager to buy tickets. (Sunset Blvd. is another one this year.) Cole Escola portrays First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, but she is not a gay character. In the world that Escola has created on stage, Abraham Lincoln is — not what you could call out and proud, most definitely not a role model for the community. Lincoln (Conrad Ricamora) ogles and flirts with his handsome aide Simon, then feels guilty about it, praying: “Lord. Please oh please, win me this war, Lord and keep my wife from ruining my name. Just give me those two things and I swear to you right here and now… I swear that I will never do anything homosexual ever again.”
He wins the war, and conspires to keep his wife constrained, but he doesn’t keep to his promise. There is a bawdy (if not graphic) gay sex scene. And one of the most significant tragic events in American history is presented as the indirect result of a gay lover’s spat.
Some embrace “Oh, Mary” as gay-positive; if Lincoln is portrayed as a vicious queen, goes this reasoning, he is made so by the oppressiveness of the closet. If it echoes the worst gay stereotypes, it does this humorously, as an act of defiance, in the way that Harvey Milk, the pioneering gay politician, introduced himself as “I’m Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you.”
In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ modern take on a classic family drama, two of the characters belong to the LGBTQ+ tribe. Surely not coincidentally, they are the two characters that are most obviously the outsiders in a play that focuses on the Jaspers, a prominent Black family in Chicago of preachers and politicians inspired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his family. Naz (John Michael Hill) is a member of the family, the youngest son, but he is its black sheep, neither a politician nor a preacher, but a Nature photographer — and asexual. He befriended Aziza (Kara Young); the two met when they were neighbors in Harlem and grew close during the pandemic. Aziza is a lesbian. Before the play begins, she has asked Naz to be her sperm donor. Their sexual identities are certainly not incidental, but they are just one part of their character. Both get some beautiful monologues – Naz is the narrator of the play — that have nothing to do with sexual identity. But at one point, Solomon, the patriarch of the family, scoffs at Naz’s claim to be “‘asexual’ or ‘non-sexual’ or whatever you’re trying to call it. It’s one thing to be deceitful to the world, but it’s another to deceive yourself.” Aziza speaks up in defense of her friend:
“I actually have a degree in social work….I work with young people really – in a school setting – but I just want to say that – in my experience and just based on my training – I just want to say that asexuality is an actual, well, thing. It’s an actual category… [S]exuality really is a spectrum and not a binary and this is supported by a lot of research and, as a queer person myself with many, many friends of many shapes and stripes and I just would like it to be in the room that you consider taking Naz’s self-identification at face value…”
