Gay versions of straight romances in play or musical revivsals

A gay version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, please.

Camille

Is it true that Edward Albee or his estate would/will never allow an all-male version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"? I'd certainly like to see it.

Anyone care to cast it, either with current actors or ones from years ago?

Yes, I think they should convert most stage musicals to gay romances. It’s a difficult task to find an actor on Broadway who can play straight enough to generate chemistry with the leading lady. Same problem in many ballets I have seen. At least with gay characters, the romance stands a chance of being convincing

With all of the gay playwrights, directors, actors, composers, choreographers, and designers, one would think that coming up with original gay musicals would be possible, instead of re-casting straight ones, not unlike an all-black " Guys and Dolls."

Clare Boothe Luce's estate will not allow men to play in "The Women," but one-night-only versions with people like Charles Busch and Lypsinka have been mounted before. And I think also men are not supposed to play "Auntie Mame," and yet Charles Busch has done it in multiple one-night-only readings.

Blanche DuBois = Whitey Woods

"My Fair Lady" with a countertenor playing flower boy Eleazar Doolittle.

It could be re-titled "How Kind of You to Let Me Come."

"Gigi"

I'm thinking they could name the young man "Hugo" or "ingo", and it would center around a very private, exclusive gay escort agency for wealthy men.

"Thank heaven for Little Girls" could become "Thank Heaven for Instahoes."

Blanche DuBois is basically a gay man, is she not? She's barely into her 30's and she thinks her life is over, because she's been a wanton slut.

I heard of them casting a trans woman in the role, but a version with a gay male Blanche and a bisexual Stanley could be interesting.

A gay man as Mame could really work. How many gay men party and slut it up well into their 30's without a care in the world until something brings them back down to earth? It'd be moving to see a good time guy be forced to finally care for someone other than himself when little Patrick arrives. He could meet a nice southern daddy and have a tragic, boozy rarely employed actor friend. Gooch could be be really religious and closeted. Instead of getting pregnant, he gets HIV and dies.

"A gay man as Mame could really work"

Here's your Mame. Great partier.

How about an all-dyke version of " Boys in the Band"? The title could remain the same.

Are we a joke to you?

I would love to see a gay version of Cruel Intentions (Dangerous Liaisons ) - I'm adding a movie instead of theater. Actually - I think they did do a play or musical version.

[quote] Is it true that Edward Albee or his estate would/will never allow an all-male version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"? I'd certainly like to see it. the estate's current po

I don't know what the estate's current position is but back in the 1980s a respected Texas rep theater company licensed the play and were only a couple of weeks away from opening when Albee himself found out the production had an all male cast and stepped in to prevent it.

Also, at least a few years ago theater companies had to submit photos of the projected cast to get approval. A very respected but very light skinned black actress was approved as Martha but later a black as coal Nick was rejected. It's complicated because of the character descriptions in Albee's script. Nick is described as a golden boy WASP in the stage directions.

Also, Albee said publicly repeatedly that he didn't write a play about about four gay men, he wrote it about two hetero couples, and that's why he wouldn't approve an all male production.

But again, I have no idea about the estate's current position on these issues.

R6, Bucsh played Auntie Mame in a production of the play that ran at a theater in Sag Harbor

In the 1990s there was a serial play in the Dixon Place Hot Festival that intercut Boys in the Band and The Women. The Women was played by men and Boy in the Band by women.

I do not think any of the dialog was changed.

R16 here. Even if I got a few details wrong, I meant to make it clear that during Albee's lifetime, he made it abundantly clear that he wrote a play about four 20th century New England WASPs and he never intended or wanted the play to be presented any other way. I assume that makes it for difficult for his estate's executors in our current climate.

Because of our Congress's ridiculous extensions of copyright laws, mainly due to payoffs from Disney, it may be decades before serious artists are able to reinterpret Albee's original. I don't know.

Albee was one of the first playwrights to have it in the rights agreement that the actors had to be of the same gender as the character. This is because since the 60s people have wanted to do Woolf with four men.

He did revise the play for four black actors to play, cutting the refs to blue eyes.

A number of theaters have not done Albee because you only get provisional rights until you submit headshots. I know of at least one theater that just passed on Albee because of this headache.

The On A Queer Day revisal failed, not because of the gay plot, but because the rest of the story and score were so radically altered.

William Faulkner wrote a novel in 1927 that lesbians in it.....but it actually works better as a gay male situation. It was based on real events that happened to him.

Not strictly on topic but related: when Annie first opened on Broadway, a lot of people called it "Olivor! in Drag."

No one called it " Olivor! in Drag."

Did it ever explain how Mame has such a swanky place in New York. What did she even do?

Wouldn't it be more realistic for a bohemian such as herself to be living in some shitty apartment somewhere?

Despite her Bohemian personality, she's shown to be a rich WASP with family money who is wiped out in the market crash of 1929.