Coming to terms with who you are and living authentically is, at best, challenging, and it’s certainly nothing to sing about…except when it is.
Adam Gwon’s new musical “All the World’s A Stage,” now at Keen Company, addresses this challenge head-on with beauty, sensitivity, and honesty. Set in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1996, the story is a tale of four characters — each struggling to negotiate life and, in the process, discovering who they truly are, and how to live richly with that truth.
Ricky is a deeply closeted math teacher who loves the theater yet chose math partially as a way to find something definitive and demonstrable to counteract his internal chaos and turmoil. Dede is the school secretary, a devout Christian who befriends and defends Ricky up to a point, though she must ultimately confront her ingrained belief systems. Michael is a bookstore owner, trying to live out loud in the small town, yet refusing to go somewhere that might be “easier.” Sam is a student at the school where Ricky teaches, feeling outcast and lost but hoping to get a theater scholarship. Ricky starts dating Michael and coaching Sam for a monologue competition. This lands Ricky in hot water with the conservative community, and while Dee tries to defend Ricky, it’s anything but, pardon the pun, straightforward.
Each character has a public persona they play on life’s stage while trying to resolve their internal struggles. Each character’s journey is different, and Gwon handles it all with utmost grace that is neither preachy nor polemical and respects the humanity and evolution of each of these fascinating individuals. All of this plays out in just over 90 minutes accompanied by one of the best new scores of recent memory delivered with heartfelt, stellar performances by Eliza Pagelle (Sam), Jon-Michael Reese (Michael), Matt Rodin (Ricky), and Elizabeth Stanely (Dee). The show is deeply moving, wonderfully provocative, and relevant, to say the least.
Gwon has drawn on his own experience in creating this world and these characters, and he discussed that in a recent interview with Gay City News. His writing is generous and open, which allows the world he’s created to seem vibrantly real.
Gwon highlighted parallels between himself and Sam, the young student who struggles to fit in while coming to terms with being gay.
“I was her age in high school asking these questions of myself and did not have any role models or anyone that I could talk with about this stuff — no peers, no teachers,”Gwon said.
He added: “When Johnny [Silverstein, artistic director of Keen Company and the director] came to me with this commission, it was that moment a few years ago when ‘Don’t say gay’ was in the news. The question was what parts of their identity could gay teachers talk about in the classroom.”
From there, Gwon started wondering what it would have been like if he had that kind of role model — would it have been easier or more complicated?
“I truly don’t know the answer,” Gwon said. “We’ve been talking amongst the cast and people in the show, looking back at these moments that we had as teenagers, where we realized in hindsight, maybe someone had seen us and was trying to sort of nudge us in the right direction.”
Gwon recalls a time in school when a teacher pulled him in into a hallway and urged him to go away for college and seek out a place that was more diverse with people who were more open.
“Looking back,” he said, “I wonder, was it, was it someone, did he clock something in me that I hadn’t even maybe clocked in myself yet?”
As for the evangelical Dee and her story arc, that’s drawn from Gwon’s personal experience as well.
“The evangelical character and that aspect of the community comes from my partner’s experience growing up, his family, and our relationship with them today… which is we love them. They love us. It’s a wonderful relationship, and it’s also very complicated. So, I wanted to capture the complexity that I feel in my own life, having ‘those conversations’ with ‘those people.’”
Gwon thinks often about how individuals silo themselves into bubbles with other who agree with them. But he acknowledges that there are often loved ones who “just have these other points of view on certain very personal, very difficult subjects,” and he wanted to capture the essence of that theme.
“My partner’s and my relationship with his family went from something very extreme and very religious in his childhood to now they send us matching pajama sets for Christmas,” said Gwon, who added that by having the difficult conversations, we can achieve “small, incremental changes — and some forward movement is possible.”
Getting to the love under everything is what drives the story, Gwon notes.
Asking people to think differently, to open their hearts and be exposed to new ideas is certainly one of the elemental functions of theater. In “All the World’s A Stage,” the bold and intimate conversation is immediate and timely and reminds us that despite our disagreements, we’re all imperfect; we’re all in this together and whatever else we are all human. It’s a beautiful message beautifully expressed.
“All The World’s A Stage” | Keen Company at Theatre Row | 410 W. 42nd Street. | Tues-Sat 7 p.m.; Sat, Sun 2 p.m. through May 10 | $75 & $95 here | 90 mins, no intermission
