Review: Good Time Charlie, Ryan J. Haddad’s Tribute to a Favorite Gay Uncle

Would the American theater even exist without gay uncles? We are overrepresented in both the company and the audience, but we also serve as evangelists of the stage, transforming our nieces and nephews into the audience of the future.

An early scene in Ryan J. Haddad’s Good Time Charlie, now making its world premiere at the Public Theater, depicts just such a conversion. Uncle Charlie (Jonathan Raviv) takes young Ryan (the playwright as an 8-year-old version of himself) to the touring production of The Phantom of the Opera at Playhouse Square. Initially terrified of the falling chandelier and exploding protagonist, Ryan grows up to become a devotee of the musical theater with a stage career of his own.

At least, that’s the short, neat version of the story. The truth is far messier in this charming (if occasionally shaggy) two hour, 15-minute memory play, populated by a cast of unruly characters with a tendency to interject.

“Charlie, you didn’t introduce Ryan to theater. We introduced Ryan to theater,” protests Ryan’s mother Judy (Artemis Pebdani). Dad (a hilariously acerbic Nael Nacer) adds that he has spent thousands of dollars on tickets to shows he didn’t even want to see. Ryan’s lesbian Aunt Janice (Beth Malone) insists that that she took Ryan to his first show.

“Ryan,” she gently reproaches him, “we already have plenty of gay male stories in the American theater. Where are the women?” As expected, Malone lands each line and emotional beat with the grace of an Olympic gymnast. Later in the play, Ryan tries to convince Janice to buy him full-price tickets to Fun Home.

That should give you a sense of Haddad’s playfully metatheatrical style, which is prone to digressions and musical flights of fancy (vocal director Andrea Grody has everyone sounding superb).

What begins as a tribute to a beloved uncle expands to include Charlie’s partner Lou (Tim Bagley, nimbly capturing the light yet supportive touch required of a successful senior partner in an intergenerational relationship). Lou is 21 years older than Charlie, but they were drawn together by a love of cinema.

That is also what binds Charlie to Sheldon, Lou’s best friend and the proprietor of Cleveland’s repertory cinema. Michael Cristofer is a slam dunk in the role of a cultured and highly opinionated older gay man whose initial frostiness melts into fatherly adoration. With Ryan added to the mix, it becomes a loving portrait of chosen family.

Perhaps in search of conflict, Haddad also delves into the very different receptions Ryan and Charlie received from their respective parents when they came out of the closet. By 2008, even gay kids in suburban Ohio could expect begrudging acceptance, which is what Ryan got. What a difference a couple of decades make. Pebdani and Nacer convincingly perform double-duty as Charlie’s folks, who spent much of the ’80s insisting that their son renounce his homosexuality and refusing to meet Lou.

Raviv gives a brave performance here and throughout, beautifully portraying a man who is more fabulous than circumstance often allows him to be, and whose appreciation for art and style is timeless. We absolutely believe this is the kind of guy who is naturally attracted to older men, finding his own cohort lacking. And he pays it forward with his support of Ryan, even when that means exposing painful family secrets to an audience of strangers.

It’s Lou who ultimately comes to Charlie’s defense—not from the homophobic aggression of his parents (a subject he considers resolved), but from the scavenging eye of his playwright nephew. “You needed a flash of violence to contrast your fairy tale,” he says, disappointment radiating from his voice.

Good Time Charlie is Haddad’s most ambitious project yet. He has hitherto created confessional solo-ish shows like Hold Me in the Water and Dark Disabled Stories. He’s still in this one, unafraid to marinate in authorly ambivalence seasoned with self-deprecating humor. But the center of gravity has shifted as new perspectives take center stage, sometimes in direct contrast to that of the playwright.

It’s easy to envision a script this self-aware and packed with contemplative monologues becoming a slog, but it never does under the steady direction of Danny Sharron. Scenic designer Afsoon Paloufar re-creates Lou’s Japanese-inspired garden onstage, so that the entire play becomes a rehearsal of the Haddad family theater, creative differences about the script on full display.

Enver Chakartash’s costumes hint at period (the play covers 1976 to the present) without hindering the liquid nature of Haddad’s narrative. Lighting designer Barbara Samuels and sound designer Ryan Gamblin seamlessly collaborate to create a world of memory, in which characters leap through time, scenes materialize in an instant, and we’re never far away from a musical number.

While Good Time Charlie is not in the same league as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (to which Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis generously compares it in his program note), it is still a perfectly lovely evening at the theater that will leave you with plenty to think about, especially concerning the people who taught you how to be human and what they had to overcome to get there.