Genre:
Comedy/Drama
Runtime:
100 - 110 mins
Cast:
2 male(s), 1 female(s), gender-flexible
Synopsis:
FRED, a middle-aged gay insurance salesman, appears buttoned-up and buttoned-down, the kind of guy who takes his overbearing mother LILLIAN with him when he goes shopping for a sofa. But underneath the Brooks Brothers suit beats the heart of a fabulist, who escapes into vivid fantasies of flying secretly to England to meet his real mother the Queen… joining a Mexican cult which celebrates vegetables… and cross-dressing so no one notices (by wearing his evening gown under his suit).
Fred's also a world-class hypochondriac, and no sooner has Lillian succeeded as a matchmaker and found him a boyfriend, than Fred is diagnosed with a fatal disease so rare only other hypochondriacs have ever heard of it.
He embarks on a roller-coaster journey, confronting a surreal and incompetent health care system, dealing with friends and lovers â€" all played by one actor, THE OTHER GUY â€" with mixed reactions to his condition, and coming to terms with Lillian, who initially seems the stereotypical butt-of-the-joke Jewish mother, but who proves fierce in her determination to help her son. In the end, after an excruciating death, Fred returns from The Other Side to let us know that Tinsel Heaven â€" where gay people go when they die â€" is much nicer than anyone could imagine, and that the power of love is, after all, what really drives the universe.
Notes:
The play won the $2,500 Max and Janet Salter Prize in the Julie Harris National Playwriting Competition, and was a semi-finalist at the Ashland New Plays Festival. Performing rights controlled by the author.
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