Richard Cant gives an electric performance in this (largely) one-person play, based on real events, which makes its debut at Wilton’s Music Hall. In 1971, aged 51, Merle Miller – novelist and former editor of Harper’s Magazine – outed himself as gay in a game-changing article in the New York Times.
Miller was inspired to write ‘What It Means to be a Homosexual’ in response to a piece by literary critic Joseph Epstein, published the previous year in Harper’s, in which the latter proclaimed: ‘If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of the Earth’.
This is the starting point for James Corley’s play. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ may be a hoary old cliché, but, for Cant’s Miller – drawn, initially unwillingly, out of the seclusion in a quiet New York village to become a leading figure in gay liberation – it’s at the heart of who he is and pivotal in a post-Stonewall Riots landscape.
For both good and bad, words are weapons of mass deconstruction in Corley’s script, which draws heavily on Miller’s article – particularly for Cant’s drily delivered refrain that ‘a “fag” is a homosexual that has left the room.’ There are strong parallels drawn between Miller’s frustrated struggles with writing and his ambivalence about entering the battle. Language, personal risk and civil rights intertwine.
Director Harry Mackrill keeps Miller’s freewheeling account of his life – mostly addressed to the audience, with constant interruptions by telephone calls from editors and activists – reasonably clear. He uses split-level staging and lighting changes to delineate the frequent changes of pace, mood and time. The production’s air of artifice aptly reflects Miller’s lifelong awareness of the persona he’s projecting.
Whether shrouded in a dressing gown or eyeballing the audience, Cant is never less than mesmeric. He delivers his lines with a distracted, off-beat musicality – his enunciation acting as the punctuation to Miller’s indecision. His body seems to grind in tension with itself as he wonders if his age has rendered his voice irrelevant to civil rights. There’s something powerfully resonant about the question.
Ironically, it’s as Miller really delves into his autobiography – drawing heavily from the New York Times article – that the play begins to lose some of its energy. There’s a boggy amount of detail that lacks the spiky edge of the earlier scenes. Thankfully, the late-stage appearance of Cayvan Coates as a gay boy from Pittsburgh, in a tear-stained state of crisis, acts as a shot of adrenalin. He holds Miller – and the play – to account.
Part of this play’s power lies in its timing. To roll out another cliché, ‘the past is prologue’. As Miller lays into politicians who cynically target gay people to win elections, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the UK government’s transphobic statements in recent weeks. Miller’s appeal to us bridges time and place, not just the gap between stage and stalls.