The title for Finding the Burnett Heart is a cryptic reference to a family looking to emotionally connect, while also being predisposed to a fatal genetic cardiac condition that can strike its male members. It’s an ardent coming out story that treads over very familiar territory when circumstances place a teenager and his grandfather as roommates in the two-bedroom home of the former’s parents. Their generational conflict spark the drama. While the relevancy feels very 1980s, the coming out phenomenon today permeates the fabric of American culture all the way to the reaches of suburban Christianity, with casualties who have fallen through the cracks of It Gets Better--its invisible presence fuels the play’s earnestness. The script itself is unfortunately one-dimensional and pedestrian, offering a live-action presentation of an after-school special.
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| Joel Johnstone as Tyler |
We’re introduced to Tyler (Joel Johnstone), who we know is a teenager, because he stands on his ankles and his side of the room is a hot mess. While we know the dutiful son doesn’t want to disappoint his mother, outside of some rudimentary caginess, when push comes to shove, there isn’t enough riding on The Big Reveal. Johnstone has chemistry with James Handy, who plays Grandfather James, but the script makes for an obnoxious trip there. The heavy-handed dialogue includes such lines as, “You just told your grandfather that you were gay” and “Almost everything done in my life has been done in spite of you.” But, there are moments where Paul Elliott throws in some pleasant assonance: “At least, I’m not senile or in denial.” The play is in need of humor, but there are few of these welcomed moments, like James innocently teasing his grandson about something he found on his iMac. While he jocularly shoves his grandson into the (physical) closet, gramps shows he isn’t too old to learn new jargon, even if clumsily executed, “It’s starred: meaning your favorites, your bookmarks.”
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| James Handy as James, Johnstone as Tyler |
Colleen Renee McGrann has the thankless role as matronly shrew Grace. We know which side her religious bread is buttered on because she admonishes her son any time he swears. As well, WWJD (what would Jesus do?) is a phrase used more than once. But, her one-dimensional Christian deserves a more eloquent argument. The actress has a no-nonsense Mary Steenburgen quality with her brittle voice, but one wonders where her misplaced unease is every instance the bedroom's disarray blinds the eyes of the textbook tidier.
The shift to the big reveal doesn’t quite arrive with the necessary stakes to provide much of a bang. It comes out of nowhere, really—oddly paralleling a similar underwhelming suddenness in the recent film Pariah. While this may convey a truth in reality and coming out should essentially be a non-event, intentional or not, it does little to illustrate the insular world of exposing a secret that touches the very core of who a person is. Coming out is often a heavily weighed affirmation of a person’s existence as gay in society. It wouldn’t be so necessary if their environment was more accepting, but, for 16-year-old Tyler, EVERYTHING should ride on this revelation.
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| Collenn McGrann as Grace, Johnstone as Tyler, and Jeff Williams as Robert |
The child’s bedroom setting becomes significant, as its transitory nature highlights human beings are created with no choice in the matter to the one birthed, yet their presence in a household is intended as temporary. They’re renters, if you if will, while they fully form enough until they are ready to leave the nest. Yet, the play asks: what if that baby bird isn’t ready to fly when its self-preservation depends on a premature flight? Instead of the inclusive set of the previous After the Fall, the focus of the Lillian stage is sparsely on its quarter-geometric proscenium. The unkempt style of the grandson is juxtaposed next to the grandfather’s side, who contains his own clutter on a lonely night stand. A solitary cross hangs above the light-switch in a pasture of its own azure space just left of Tyler’s tacked-up assembly of artwork littering the room. Tyler’s pictures are slowly, randomly ripped off the cauliflower blue wall, just as he feels his identity being stripped away from his home. The symbolism is blunt (especially considering the hidden picture the illustrations reveal), but it’s a nice directorial touch. Tyler’s room, once invaded, becomes a shared fortress, only to transform into an abandoned hallow acquisition Grace seeks to possess on her own terms. Just as a side-note, I’ve never seen a bedroom door open and close so many times before in my life.
The script also touches on themes of learning to cope with differences in others, parenting styles, redemption, and the price of repression. The play didn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t serve a purpose. In one of the production’s few genuinely sweet and relevant moments, Tyler and Walter share what they find attractive in the objects of their desire. The older straight couple sitting next to me was holding hands. Another audience member sat forward in rapt attention of the often episodic nature of the writing.
I have a friend who got burnt out recently on coming out stories. He kept hoping for local live theatre to produce a gay story that offered something different, or least, fresh, other than the typical right-of-passage story that has been readily around for over a good two decades now. While the possibilities haven’t been completed exhausted, at this point, the pickings are pretty slim. I’m reminded of a New Yorker cartoon from years ago depicting an upper class gay couple lounging on their couch discussing whether or not they’ll be attending Pride. “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re used to it,” is the snarky, detached response. But, it’s a long fall between the Manhattan elite and a less urbane high-schooler from middle America.
These plays may also will themselves into existence because there isn’t a seminal teenage coming-out play that has most iconically put the nail in the coffin. Has the ship already sailed? American theatre should have moved on by now, but mainstream America hasn’t. We’ve had many groundbreaking theatrical milestones over the decades that have moved on to more complicated subject matter … Boys in the Band, The Normal Heart, Angels in America, Jeffrey, Love! Valour! Compassion! The recent Next Fall takes the conversation into the realm of a Christian and agnostic in a relationship and the resulting repercussions after an accident. As well, Expecting to Fly tells a gay story that is more a story that just happens to have two gay characters. We’ve even had coming-out plays which have enjoyed some success like Beautiful Thing, which I’m surprised hasn’t been revisited considering the recent LA production of What’s Wrong With Angry?, a one-act monologue from Love Struck, and closeted story-lines in Our Lady of 121st Street, and LA ViewsV. But, most of the material suffer from a triteness that may very well be a sign of the times and/or this reviewers own jadedness. Victims who don’t get to live to see that “it gets better” deserve something artistically better. Finding the Burnett Heart closed on the 27th of May.
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