Drama Club

THEATER: It’s A Gay-Celeb Stage Bonanza With Rupert Everett As Wilde, Alan Cumming In Macbeth

God knows the theater is full of homosexuals, but this week heralds several big-name gays headlining bold new productions.

Autumn in London brings queer history to the Hampstead Theatre, where Rupert Everett will portray homo-wit exemplar Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss. The play traces Wilde’s later life, from his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas and his arrest for “gross indecency” to his post-gaol exile to Italy. In his own later years, Everett has taken to the stage like a lush to vodka, having appeared on Broadway in 2009 in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, alongside grande dame Angela Lansbury. Kiss isn’t his first foray into the wild Wilde world, either: Everett starred in the film versions of The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband.

If you’re bubbling like a cauldron to see Alan Cumming, get thee to New York this month for the Lincoln Center Festival, where the out Scotsman is staging a one-man Macbeth. Yes, Cumming is playing all the infamous roles, from the titular king and his murderous wife all the way down to the three witches. The production is set in a mental asylum, which hasn’t been everyone’s cup of witch’s brew: When Alan tested out the production in Scotland earlier this year it met with standing ovations but also quite a few walkouts.

Now’s the time to familiarize yourself with cutie Matt Doyle, the out actor-singer who lit up Broadway productions of Spring Awakening and Bye Bye Birdie. Doyle is slated to star in Diner, a new musical adaptation of the classic film by Sheryl Crow, slated to open this fall on the Great White Way. If Crow doesn’t have the chops to pen a winning musical, Doyle’s sublime singing voice and radiant charm should keep this one afloat for a while.

We leave you with a classic clip of Katie Holmes singing “On My Own,” the oft-warbled, sad-sack toe-tapper from Les Misérables. The scene is from a Season One episode of Dawson Creek, back in 1998, when her character, Joey Potter, entered a beauty pageant. Who’d have thunk her solo showtune would prove prophetic all these years later?

 

Photos: Vicki Neave, Matt Doyle Music

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