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Stage

A delicate balance of family values

By TOM VALEO
Published October 20, 2006

When a new bride discovers she is pregnant, her husband suggests a new test that will detect genetic disorders. The results reveal a healthy baby boy who possesses a constellation of genes that predict with near certainty he will be gay.

The wife senses her husband's disappointment and considers having an abortion. Her gay brother is horrified.

That is the premise behind The Twilight of the Golds, an engaging and provocative play by Jonathan Tolins at the Suncoast Theatre.

But the play is far more than a dramatized argument over the ethics of terminating a pregnancy. Tolins uses the premise to illustrate how even a family held together by strong bonds of love can be shattered by a single act deemed unforgivable by one of its members. By the end of the play, the Golds have become entangled in a tragedy of operatic proportions, a fact not lost on opera-loving David, the gay brother who drives the story to its devastating climax.

David's homosexuality still disturbs his parents, played as bland but good-natured suburbanites by Carolyn Zaput and David Hershman.

His sister, Suzanne, seems to accept her younger brother unconditionally. Yet, when her husband, Rob, played by Brad Minus as a slightly smug and rigid scientist, indicates he'd rather not have a gay son, she considers an abortion, knowing David will be upset.

And he is. David tells his sister that her willingness to go along with this idea implies that he, too, shouldn't have been born.

"Do you know how horrifying this is?" he tells Suzanne. "To find out that the people who brought you into this world wish that they had slammed the door?"

Daniel Harris portrays David as brimming with charm, exuberance and a consuming passion for opera. His detailed descriptions of Richard Wagner's four-opera "Ring" cycle, which includes The Twilight of the Gods, provide a metaphorical backdrop for the family tensions. Harris' high-energy performance dominates every scene he's in and upstages Sara Wilemon, who plays Suzanne.

Twilight opened on Broadway in 1993. But Tolins' warning that a family can be destroyed by a failure of love remains as urgent as ever, and the Suncoast production provides a potent and disturbing theatrical experience.

[Last modified October 20, 2006, 08:52:24]