The Lambda Players have gone to a great deal of trouble to bring their current production of Terrence McNally’s The Ritz to the stage with mostly positive results. The show, which runs through April 6 at the 24th Street Theatre, features a remarkable two-story set that includes a spiral staircase and numerous entrances and exits. It is without a doubt the most complex and ambitious staging I have seen the Lambda Players attempt, and it serves McNally’s play very well. Staging is important here because the play is a farce about a straight man trying to escape a hit from his mafia brother-in-law by hiding out in a New York bathhouse. The time is the early-to-mid seventies, before AIDS, and before political correctness made many of the stereotypes in the play unwelcome. The show feels like a valentine from a simpler time now, and its quaintness is refreshing given the graphic nature of current gay material, like Queer As Folk. (I should add that the show does contain plenty of skin, although no full nudity.)

The marvel of this production, aside from the aforementioned set, is the cast, which breathes life into McNally’s somewhat labored slapstick. Bob Reaux is a hoot as the resident queen, who swishes and cruises around the bathhouse looking for action. Reaux has some of the best lines in the play, and he wrings them dry. Christine Hooten is also fun, throwing herself into the role of Googie Gomez, the Puerto Rican diva who entertains in the bath while waiting for her big break. Herb K. Schultz does a good job with the role of Claude Perkins, the chubby-chaser who falls for our straight hero, and Matthew Abergel makes the most of a difficult part as Michael Brick, the helium-voiced hunk hired to look for the intended victim. Also hunky are Damian Crichfield as the haughty hottie Chaps (the name says it all), and Scott Griffith and Clayton Litwinenco as Tiger and Duff, employees of the bath who provide beefcake without attitude.

The real reason to see the show, however, is Bob DeLucia who plays the hero Gaetano Proclo with such wide-eyed, comic finesse that I felt as if I had seen the play before, even though I know I never have. DeLucia’s expressions are funny even when he isn’t delivering a line, and he has the character’s walk and mannerisms down pat. Sure the play is dated now, but DeLucia and cast go at it with such zest that you’ll probably be laughing too hard to notice.

Chris Narloch
OUTWORD NEWSMAGAZINE