Review: In Jerome, a Throuple Blooms in the Desert

Con (Stephen Spinella) and Doane (Jeorge Bennett Watson) seem like the ideal spokes-couple for the same-sex marriage campaign that took place in the first decade of this century. Both 60-something veterans of the Korean War, they have been monogamous for nearly three decades at the top of John J. Caswell Jr.’s Jerome, now making its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons. They are undeniably what a well-meaning straight woman might call cute.

The play takes place from 1992-94, during the peak of AIDS-related deaths in America; but Con suffers from health problems unrelated to HIV that have Doane driving him to and from the hospital at regular intervals. They would absolutely benefit from the legal protections of marriage, but that won’t become an option in Arizona (where the play takes place) until 2014 and Con is running out of time—so he improvises.

He and Doane spot a handsome stranger across the dance floor at the annual Halloween Ball of the Northern Arizona Pride Alliance, which happens to coincide with their anniversary. “Don’t you think we’ve been a little, I don’t know, milquetoast,” Con says as he floats the possibility of a celebratory ménage à trois. “All this time together, no semblance of a treat along the way?” And in a gay miracle, they get that treat when that remarkably chiseled 50-something, whose name is Bruin (Ken Barnett), shows up to Doane’s tour of the ruins of Jerome the next day. Doane invites him to dinner, and Bruin accepts and stays for the following year.

I can already hear the queens gagging on Caswell’s meaty contrivance. A hookup who doesn’t go home within an hour of coitus terminating? No, thank you. But one must remember that Caswell is writing for a time before Grindr, and in a location that is practically a ghost town. Is it so far-fetched to believe that a man like Bruin, fleeing from mysterious but deducible tragedy in San Francisco, might seek refuge in the safe harbor of this solidly established relationship? Or that Con might find comfort in the notion that his stalwart partner will not be alone when he dies? Such arrangements have quietly existed forever, though they have rarely been portrayed this persuasively onstage.

Much of that has to do with Spinella and Watson, a late addition to the company. Though they have only played opposite each other for a short time, Spinella and Watson feel like an old married couple, with a lived-in cadence that toggles between bickering and the tenderest expressions of love. Watson projects stoic fortitude as Doane, a protector and keeper of tradition. Spinella is hilariously quirky as Con, the homemaker and comedian who hits Bruin with a full blast of his colorful personality on that first dinner, shockingly not scaring him away (that’s how you know Bruin is a keeper). They are what Anthony Burgess once described as a civilization of two, and both actors make us understand just how appealing that can be when the outside world is on fire.

But incorporating newcomers into any society is fraught. Understandably, the sexual connection between Bruin and Doane is stronger, but Doane never lets him forget that Con is his priority, a real mood killer when you’re feeling that new relationship energy. “This is your life, I’m just living in it,” Bruin shouts at Doane as the two older men retreat to the bedroom after a fight, leaving Bruin alone to stew in resentment and cheap beer.

An elusive smile under attractively graying hair, Barnett delivers a gripping performance as an older man who was raised Mormon and is still relatively new to gay life. Having traveled this far already, the prospect of a three-way relationship doesn’t seem like a bridge too far. We chart his assimilation through Rodrigo Muñoz’s costumes as he transitions from basic city gay to Brokeback fantasy. And yet he keeps his past a closely guarded secret, a prophylactic of silence meant to keep the pain from infecting this new life.

Director/scenic designer Dustin Wills accentuates the suspense of a predictable script so that we not only wonder if these three will work it out, but we become emotionally invested in the relationship. His set, which depicts the cliffside home Con and Doane share, is an actual man cave, a hermetically sealed chamber for this relationship to flourish or fail. It also provides the basis for some of this production’s jaw-dropping magic, most notably at the end of the first act.

More wizardry comes from Barbara Samuels’s lighting, which gorgeously slashes across the stage to illuminate Bruin in his white briefs, as if frozen in moonlight.

Leah Gelpe has created an arresting soundscape for Jerome that is simultaneously realistic (the sound of a blaring television or an approaching car), fantastic (a sound collage that makes their first sexual encounter seem like a jet launching from an aircraft carrier), and cinematic. Con delivers a heartfelt and wrenchingly candid monologue to Bruin at the 1993 Halloween ball, underscored by Madonna’s “Crazy for You.” It’s a bold move for the theater, but it works beautifully here, momentarily making us feel the deep unselfish love Con has for Doane—deep enough to prepare the way for a successor: “He’s gonna need you, Bruin, you realize this?”

In a time when the fashionable formation of triads and polycules is the subject of profiles in glossy magazines, an attention-grabbing lifestyle choice for the urban consumer who has it all and still wants more, Caswell dares to depict a thornier, less glamorous truth: Sometimes the best relationships aren’t born from endless choice, but urgent necessity. Who will show up for you when you’re at your worst? We should all be so lucky to have that kind of love in our lives, whether it comes from one person or more.