After starting its first season with the daring and remarkably honest Slap and Tickle, Gypsy Productions — devoted mostly to plays about gay experience — is now bringing us Nile Blue. And it's the sophomore slump all over again.Not that Clint Jefferies' musical is terrible — in fact, the acting is often very good, the set is just fine, Paul L. Johnson's music is nicely modern, and Dan Khoury's direction is crisp. But the script, supposedly set in ancient Egypt, is relentlessly average from moment to moment — average dialogue, plot, song lyrics — and two of the key performers just don't have voices of musical-theater quality. A frame-story — in which two present-day archeologists discover the tomb of the show's principal characters — never adds up to much of anything, and the one woman on stage is presented as such an ill-tempered slob, it's no wonder that her husband turns to his slave for consolation. Finally, the script's main gambit — to show us a gay couple in ancient times — turns out to be a fraud: No attempt is made to depict what actual Egyptian attitudes were toward homosexuality, the language that the characters use is consistently up-to-date American, and it turns out that author Jefferies isn't really interested in past history. What's left is a mildly suspenseful boy-meets-boy story with an onstage (nude) sex scene and some interesting music. It's not very revelatory, but from time to time it's entertaining. In an average way.
The play could be set in any society that ever had slavery, from Egypt to the American South. In the present version, it goes like this: Egyptian Niankhkhnum acquires a captured Ninevehan slave named Khnumhotep (for efficiency's sake, let's call them Master and Slave). Master rapes his Slave on several occasions, and plans to sell him to a traveling Slave Trader. But one moment before the sale, the Slave begs the Master not to let him go: he knows he'll be worked to death by the new Master, whereas the old Master seems (aside from the rapes) less demanding. Master relents — after humiliating the Slave — and proceeds to teach him his trade of manicurist (the play wants to be campy good fun on odd occasions). In the course of one of these lessons, Master and Slave hold hands, beginning a series of events that will lead to their love affair.
But first we meet Master's harridan wife Asru, who petulantly demands that Master whip Slave. Once Asru is out of the picture, Master and Slave get personal: They confess inner feelings, strip down, embrace and fuck. Next thing you know, the two lovers are arranging a long voyage together, minus bitchy Asru. But upon their return, they have a lovers' quarrel: Master, it seems, wants to turn Slave into another wife, whereas Slave imagined something more like full equality. Angry, Master takes things further: He actually gives Slave his freedom and throws him out of the house. But can these two remain apart? Since the play begins many centuries later in their twin tomb, the suspense that we feel is not exactly overpowering.
The action is punctuated by several songs that are musically, if not lyrically, interesting. In fact, composer Johnson's melodies are among the most successful features of Nile Blue. Johnson's music is modern, often difficult, flirting with discordancy and making some serious demands on the play's singers. As for the lyrics, they're, well, more or less average. Too often, they're simply bland ("Well, I guess I got what I wanted/ I'm finally my own man./ But what you want and what you need just aren't always the same./ And losing the one thing I need,/ Well, it wasn't a part of the plan"). A few times, though, they're intelligent and memorable ("Nile brown/ The everyday grind that never winds down./ The dirt and debris of your day flowing by./ Can't see beneath no matter how hard you try…/ The dull colors you see every day./ Nile brown")
Unfortunately, the blander lyrics win the day, and even Johnson's challenging melodies can't redeem that sad fact. As for the singers: only Dave A. Thomas as Niankhkhnum shows a consistent command of Johnson's musical idiom. Larry Buzzeo as Khnumhotep is on target only part of the time, and that's true of Shawna Byrd as Asru as well. Of course, outside of major entertainment centers (New York, Los Angeles) it's hard to find good actors who also are excellent singers. But when you stage a musical, you're implicitly promising that your performers can handle it all; and that's mostly a promise Nile Blue doesn't keep.
There is some fine acting here, though, both from Thomas and Buzzeo. Best of all is Thomas, who plays his role with such authority, he might as well be acting Shakespeare. As the Egyptian Master, Thomas is short-tempered, imperious, eminently capable of gentleness but not about to show it to anyone undeserving. As Khnumhotep, Buzzeo is also convincing: he plays the slave with the rueful humor of someone who's suddenly found himself several rungs below his self-image. Byrd as Asru isn't so interesting, though; playing beside two earnest actors, it's disconcerting to see that she doesn't take her role seriously. But Daniel J. Harris and David C. Baker are just fine in small parts, and most of the stage time belongs to Thomas and Buzzeo anyway.
Other design elements are mostly fine. A real success is Trevor Keller's set, which nicely resembles the interior of an Egyptian tomb, complete with hieroglyphics, wall painting, an offering table and a smashed area where grave robbers have been. Katrina Grenon's costumes are adequately historic-looking, and Bill Booth's lighting keeps our attention well directed.
If only that attention could be directed toward a worthy object. Long before it ends, Nile Blue becomes a disappointment, an overly conventional story told in a milieu that turns out to be more modern America than ancient Egypt. With the burgeoning of historical gay studies over the last couple of decades, you might expect that some playwright would compose a work about gay life in the real Egypt, not this phony one. That show would be worth our time. This one is just another average experience, as easy to forget as yesterday's paper.
And yesterday's paper is about as "ancient" as Nile Blue.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2004.