Quince Productions is taking theatergoers on a trip back to the ’80s with its spring production of “Eastern Standard,” the 1988 romantic comedy by playwright Richard Greenberg about two pairs of people — one gay, one straight — who attempt to form relationships amid the hectic atmosphere of New York City.
Quince veterans Ben Storey (“Mike and Seth,” “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later”) and Calvin Atkinson (“Slipping,” “Mike and Seth”) play the two gay characters, Peter and Drew, in the production.
Atkinson said he’s finding the characters and the humor in “Eastern Standard” to be more intricate than in other productions he has performed with Quince.
“Greenberg’s writing is so good,” he said. “He’s one of my favorite writers for the way he uses vocabulary and the way he turns phrases. The characters are just really clever, witty and funny. There’s definitely a lovely contrast that he puts in between the upper-crust characters and the lower-crust characters and how these upper-crust characters use their words to play. There’s a lot of teasing and making fun of people and it’s just rich the way he writes it. This has fulfilled a want of mine to use that wit and cleverness that I’ve wanted to use. The pieces I’ve done with Quince before have had intricate language but this is more complex.”
Peter and Drew haven’t met each other when act one begins. When we meet Drew, he is at a restaurant with his college buddy, Stephen, and Peter just happens to be dining in the same restaurant with his sister.
“Drew and Stephen, we have been friends since we went to Dartmouth,” Atkinson explained. “We have the friendship that maybe isn’t extraordinary but it is a little unusual for a gay man and a straight man to have this close of a friendship. Drew is very smart. He is an artist and very comfortable with his sexuality. The most important thing to him is his wit because he loves how smart he is. He has a wonderfully clever vocabulary and he enjoys being smarter than people around him. He’s very much a product of his time but he’s still a character we’d recognize today.”
Peter, meanwhile, is a 20-something working in New York and grappling with his recent HIV diagnosis, Storey said.
“He recently found out that he is HIV-positive and is expectedly having a hard time with it. He’s trying to quietly disappear from the world. He doesn’t want to deal with telling people unless he has to,” Storey said. “He meets a guy he’s attracted to but he doesn’t want to let him in because it just seems like it would be a big disappointment or not worth beginning a new relationship as he’s starting to get sick. That’s his big struggle, figuring out if he can let someone in emotionally while he’s dealing with all that. He’s pretty closed off throughout, and the second act is really the process of him beginning to open up and find a way to make a connection with Drew, whom he ends up falling for. Drew is an interesting character. He can’t see that Peter is interested but he can tell why he won’t give him a chance. He just keeps fighting for it.”
Storey added that, while the main characters are mostly affluent yuppies, he found himself sympathizing with the other characters in the play whose social status isn’t quite as high as that of the two couples.
“Ellen is a waitress working in New York. She is struggling with her career. She has a terrible boyfriend and a landlord trying to kick her out of her apartment. I almost feel like I can relate to her more as a struggling 20-something person in a big city. She has a great sense of humor about her situation,” Storey said. “May is a homeless person in a restaurant in the first act. She has mental-health issues and causes a big scene. It causes all these characters to meet each other. We see her in the second act more stable and on her medication and becoming a part of this group of people. It really humanizes that character. She’s a person with a rich history and a lot to offer.”
Both actors said that the reality of HIV/AIDS in the story will be especially significant to audience members who might not have been around in that era.
“You wouldn’t say that this play is about AIDS but there is an undercurrent,” Atkinson said. “They never say the word in the play but it’s something that lives underneath and is very real to the characters. The period is a different thing for me. Being a gay man in New York in the 1980s is different than being a gay man in 2009. Especially with a gay relationship, you have to think about the prevalence of AIDS and how, at the time that this play was written, it was this big mystery and this dangerous thing people didn’t understand. My character has just come out of a four-year relationship. So he’s re-entering the world of being a single gay man at a time when this thing is reaching its height. It’s a scary thing. That’s something that everyone was thinking at the time, especially in New York, especially in the 1980s, especially being gay. It’s different today than it was then.”
“HIV and AIDS means something different now than it did then,” Storey added. “I’m 24 now in 2013 and I’ve known one or two people who are HIV-positive, but it’s not a death sentence like it was them. Of course, it’s still a major issue. People can live much longer lives. It’s been interesting to be able to understand what that means for him. There’s still a big stigma around HIV and I’ve known people who have had a hard time moving through that process and trying to figure out a way to keep living their lives. I think it is still relevant, but it means something a little different.”
Quince Productions presents “Eastern Standard” April 12-May 4 at Walnut Street Theatre’s Studio 5, 825 Walnut St. For more information or tickets, call 215-627-1088 or visit www.quinceproductions.com.