‘Only Thing Worse’ has good intentions

"The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me ..." reads a lot easier than it plays at the Las Vegas Little Theatre Studio.

The 1995 Broadway script by Dan Butler contains more than two dozen male monologues (usually performed by one actor) that offer observations -- some canny, some routine -- about gay life in America. Just when you think there's not going to be anything new here, the material takes a different direction.

We start with a comedy routine in which an over-testosteroned, foul-mouthed New Yorker finds out, in a straight bar, that his best friend is gay. You can pretty well fill in the blanks. But then there's the "understanding" sister who tells her brother, just before a Midwest high-school reunion, "Promise me you're not going to tell them you're gay"; the white ACT-UP radical who resents all those homeless, druggies, and blacks who have taken the spotlight away from him and his disease; and maybe worst of all, the father who tells his son, 10 years after finding out his kid is gay, "You know the only thing worse you could've told me? That you were dead."

You just can't not be affected by this.

Some of the stories cover too much of what other writers have covered better. But the most serious problem is in actor Brian Scott's performance.

Scott nearly always comes across as well-rehearsed, with every gesture and vocal inflection carefully planned. What he doesn't come across as is a genuine human being. You can see he's been trained, but trained for what? Speech-making?

Director Walter Niejadlik brings out the worst in Scott's tendency to indicate instead of act. But there is intelligence to what both Niejadlik and Scott are doing, and their intentions are never off the mark. I was often able to get past the falseness of it all and enjoy what might have been.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat @aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.