I’ve been in the Cape Cod resort town of Provincetown – known universally as P-town – since Friday, a tiny seaside hamlet with a registered local population of some 3,431 people at the 2000 census – but which swells to some 55,000 during the summer tourism height, many of them gay and lesbian travellers who have long “adopted” it as their own, with every week seeing an influx of different interest groups that choose a particular week to come. This week, for instance, is Bear Week (a London colleague, hearing that I was here for that, e-mailed to say to let him know when it was Beached Whale week, and he’d be here); next week is gay families week. And a friend tells me he was here once when he noticed there were a lot of large black women in town, and asked them what group they were from, and was told that there was a meeting of lesbian court stenographers in town).
It being bear week, the town was packed to heaving: as one drag comic was reported to me to have told the crowd, “I love bear week – the town seems so much fuller. Its the same number of people, just seems fuller….” S/he was referring to the fact that the bears, as they’re collectively known, are bigger (and usually furrier) gay men, who therefore take up more room. Drag, of course, is a major component of the theatrical attractions that are variously on offer throughout the season; and with a number of makeshift venues turning themselves into rooms that offer two or three shows a night, usually of about an hour each, it’s a bit like a mini-version of the Edinburgh Fringe, but devoted exclusively to queer, or queer-friendly, artists.
And talking of big, in different senses, I saw two of the biggest shows in town: veteran lesbian comic Lea de Laria (who has latterly forged a career as an occasional stage actress and rising jazz artist) and legendary porn star Jeff Stryker in a one-man, one-appendage show that (un)naturally showcases his major asset.
I’ve not always been a big fan of de Laria: certainly as a stage actress, in which I’ve seen her in the Broadway revivals of On the Town in 1998 and The Rocky Horror Show in 2000 (in which she played Eddie in male drag) and the off-Broadway musical Little Fish in 2003, she can be strident and abrasive. (Reviewing her in one of them, I once said of her that “she has less charm than pubic lice”). But seeing her swing, in every sense, in her live solo show, backed by a stonking three-piece band, I was smitten. Perhaps theatre roles are just too constraining to accommodate her large talent, because she’s a take-no-prisoners live performer.
There’s something uniquely liberating in a performer who comes onto her audience quite so aggressively: a pretty “femme” sitting near the front was virtually (and willingly, it seemed) seduced from the stage. I hesitate to repeat what she said in a family newspaper – ok, since you asked, she ended the show telling her, “I’m going to f* your brains out”, and then added, “It’s not like this seeing Dianne Reeves!”). But even more aggressive than the sexual come-on is the anti-Bush diatribe – sporting a tee-shirt that said, “I hated Bush before it was cool”, she launched into an attack on how much she hated him – but would consider having sex with his twin daughters (though would draw the line at their mother). The elderly gentleman sitting next to me grumbled, “He’s saving your life whether you like him or not,” which was a little disturbing: to find another gay Republican in P-town, of all places (besides British-born political columnist Andrew Sullivan who has long been resident in the US, and was around town all weekend), was scarier than anything de Laria said.
But the great thing about de Laria is that she can achieve a change of moods on the turn of a dime, switching effortlessly from out-there comedy to inside-the-soul music with a programme, mostly of Cole Porter standards, that she brings a real and remarkable sensitivity to.
And if that wasn’t enough, there was also a priceless anecdote about sharing a dressing room with Elaine Stritch once for a benefit show that she specifically asked us not to share with anyone else – so I won’t. (She claims never to have told it before in public, so I’ll keep the secret for now!).
From the sublime to the fairly ridiculous – Jeff Stryker is arguably the most iconic performer in the history of gay porn, a performer who from the mid-80s to the mid-90s starred in a number of movies, in which his robotic delivery of “dirty talk” became nearly as famous as his particularly notable asset. Now aged 44, and with a son that he raised himself as a single parent (after a lengthy custody battle, according to his entry on wikipedia) who is now 17, its slightly sad to see him still living on the vestiges of his porn fame; but maybe we’re the sadder ones for still buying it.
There was certainly a big curiosity factor to seeing him live, which I’ve in fact done once before, when he did a “play” called [Jeff Stryker Does] Hard Time, coincidentally at a theatre called the Provincetown Playhouse that was located off Washington Square in New York in the late 90s.Whereas that show aspired to being a prison-set drama in which there were other actors, last night’s show here had no such aspirations, but was called (with no apparent sense of irony) A Sophisticated Evening with Jeff Stryker, that was structured as a confessional in which he “revealed” some of the things that have happened to him, followed by the “meat and potatoes” (in every sense) in which he revealed even more.
For my own part, I was strangely struck by his facial resemblance to London theatre marketing and advertising guru Adam Kenwright, though I can’t personally vouch if Adam lives up to Stryker’s accomplishments in other departments.
