Paul Rudnick's The New Century

Long ago, DNA testing revealed that I lack the theater gene, so maybe it means something when I say you must go see Paul Rudnick's play The New Century. It's sort of hysterical, unlike his last four movies. As the critics have said, it's jammed with sweet one-liners but hearing them in isolation might be like eating a spoonful of flour, then a raw egg, then sugar, then butter, and hoping that tasted like cake. Let's try:

"Helen Keller would know you're a lesbian!"

"Muslin terrorists? They used cheap cotton?"

"In this house we use the toilet, not a friend from Tribeca!"

On Will & Grace: "It was like if Pottery Barn sold people."

On how to spot a gay man in the audience: "He's saving his Playbill. And he's awake."

    Of act one, starring Linda Lavin as a Jewish mother on her first night at PFLAG, my bf said, "I was laughing so hard I thought I would throw up!" (He might have said, "I was laughing so out of control I kept hitting my bf's broken leg," but never mind.) Act two concerns Mr. Charles, a fey old dandy exiled from New York for being "too gay," and his bubble-[brained] boy toy Shane. Act three is a monologue by a crafts fetishist in Illinois who deftly links her tuxedo toaster bonnet to the aids quilt to Christo's Gates, and thinks her sock monkeys might bring a smile to hospital patients where Guernica wouldn't. Obviously in act four they all meet, somehow in a maternity ward waiting room.
    To see other photos from the play and to listen to Paul Rudnick talking about his love of his characters and the horrors of gay assimilation click here.