Craig Lucas’s THE DYING GAUL play set after the AIDS pandemic is revived by Island City Stage in Wilton Manors

Craig Lucas has a very packed resume: actor, playwright, screenwriter, and theatre and film director.  (We should add, however, that he is not a South African musician;  that’s a totally different gay Craig Lucas.)  He came on QG’s radar in 1989 when his movie Longterm Companion made such a major impact on the queer community, and on us in particular.  It was the first wide-release theatrical film to deal with the subject of AIDS.  The film took its title from the euphemism The New York Times used during the 1980s to describe the surviving same-sex partner of someone who had died of AIDS.

Eight years later,  and by this time Lucas was a gay widower,  and he wrote a play called The Dying Gaul. It was just 2 years after the introduction of protease inhibitors that had removed the automatic death sentence that AIDS had meant. Lucas’s anger was so apparent in the play, which was about Robert, a writer in his mid-thirties,  who has lost his lover Malcolm to AIDS and written a screenplay based on their life together and Malcolm’s death.

Hollywood studio exec Jeffrey is willing to pay Robert $1,000,000 for the film rights on one condition: that Robert change Malcolm to Maggie.  His reasoning: “Most Americans hate gay people. If they hear it’s about gay people, they won’t go.” Making the lead couple heterosexual goes against all of Robert’s principles and his promise to Malcolm, but seduced by the money, he agrees. Jeffrey is married with children, but we soon come to realize that he may not be as devoted to his wife Elaine as Robert was/is to Malcolm. At the end of their first interview, he hugs Robert and whispers, “You are very handsome. And I’m getting a little turned on. Are you?”  

Even though the play was a tough view for us all back then, those who had personally been impacted by the pandemic, but nevertheless, Lucas got to adapt it into a movie in 2005.  It had a starry cast that included Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Campbell Scott but the reception was very mixed. The critics consensus was “Though it has a fine cast, The Dying Gaul‘s plot feels calculated and too intellectualized.  We personally feel that was to fresh a memory for those of us in the queer community, and also was still a subject that the general public wanted to deny its existence and/or did not want to talk about .

Now its some 29 years since The Dying Gaul and we think its feels right that the play is produced whilst there are not just survives from that period, but alsoas  its an essental part of queer history that needs to be shared for millenials.  Its evidently a view shared by Island City Stage in Wilton Manors who are producing the South Florida premiere of The Dying Gaul which stars Amir Darvish (Jeffrey), Jorge Amador (Robert), Autumn Kioti Horne (Elaine), and Ted deChatelet (Foss).  Its directed by Andy Rogow, artistic director of Island City Stage who said “It’s a thrilling drama where sexual deception, internet chat rooms, lies, betrayal and artistic compromise are woven together, resulting in a stunning conclusion.”]

ISLAND CITY STAGE PRESENTS ITS SOUTH FLORIDA PREMIERE OF THE DYING GAUL BY AWARD-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT, SCREENWRITER AND DIRECTOR CRAIG LUCAS

 May 22 – June 15; Tickets Are On Sale Now