Towleroad Guide to the Tube #192: Halloween Edition

UFOs: From last night's debate. Dennis Kucinich says he's seen a UFO, and more people in America have seen a UFO than approve of Bush.

THE WIDE STANCE EXPRESS: Key West recently had its Fantasy Fest. One of the entries in its parade was this tribute to Senator Larry Craig.

CAR TROUBLE: A creepy Halloween entry from the gay horror flick Hellbent.
(source: tottyland)

THE WITCH MIX: A treat from Eartha Kitt.

Check out our previous guides to the Tube here!

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LGBT Supporters of John Edwards Issue Letter to Media

LGBT supporters of John Edwards are making a renewed push for their candidate, in a letter sent to media this afternoon arguing, among other things, that "Edwards is the Democrat with the best chance to regain the White House against all of the top Republican candidates and offers the best chance to help Democrats get elected in some of the toughest races in the country because of his appeal in traditionally 'red' areas." Read the letter here. (PDF)

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Washington GOP Rep. Richard Curtis Resigns Amid Gay Sex Scandal

Washington State GOP Representative Richard Curtis has resigned following a gay sex scandal in which Curtis claims he was the victim of an extortion attempt. However, extortion appears to be the least of the problems for the married Republican. Today, he submitted his resignation to the House leader.

Washington House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt issued the following statement this afternoon:

"I am very disappointed by the news reports of the conduct by Rep. Curtis last week in Spokane. After discussing this matter with House Republican leaders, he has submitted his resignation, which we feel is best for everyone involved. The troubling details continue to emerge, however, it has become clear that he can no longer effectively represent the constituents who elected him. We pray that Richard and his family have the strength and support they need to meet the personal challenges they face."

Recently
Washington State GOP Rep. in Alleged Male Hustler Extortion Plot [tr]
Washington State GOP Rep. Curtis Exposed by Sordid Police Report [tr]
Washington State Rep's Alleged Extorter Has a Porn Past? [tr]

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Slain Soldier's Father Awarded $11 Million in Westboro Baptist Case

After deliberating for over a day, a jury today awarded Albert Snyder $11 million in a case he brought against Rev. Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church after the church picketed the funeral of his son, who was slain in a vehicle accident in Anbar province in Iraq. It's the first case brought against the church for their protests at military funerals. Westboro Baptist claims that U.S. military deaths are God's punishment for a nation that tolerates homosexuals.

The Baltimore Sun reports: "In June 2006, Snyder sued the tight-knit fundamentalist Christian church and three of its members individually. The father argued that Westboro's demonstrations exacerbated his pain and suffering in March 2006 while he mourned the death of his only son. Specifically, he charged that they violated his privacy, intentionally inflicted emotional harm and engaged in a conspiracy to carry out their activities. The jury decided in Snyder's favor on every count. The church and its members maintained that they did nothing wrong. They based their legal defense on the First Amendment, arguing that their protests were constitutionally protected. Their attorneys told jurors yesterday that Westboro members were expressing closely held religious beliefs about an immoral society, including the military, that has endorsed homosexuality."

$2.9 million is for compensatory damages, and was awarded early today. The jury came back later this afternoon and awarded an additional $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

Phelps (pictured above, today in Baltimore) has also recently renewed his push for a "Matthew Shepard in Hell" monument, picketed the funerals of victims of the Virginia Tech shootings, and picketed the Reverend Jerry Falwell's funeral, claiming he was a friend of gays.

Happy Halloween, you scary old zombie.

Father of slain Marine wins case against funeral protesters [baltimore sun]

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News: Mario Lopez, Louis Vuitton, Sydney, Tom Ford, Brazil

Robert Goulet dies at 73, awaiting lung transplant at hospital.

Does Annie Leibowitz's Louis Vuitton ad contain a hidden message from Gorbachev about poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko?

Being Mr. Gay Brazil requires Representative Barney Frank on Larry Craig: "I don’t think he should have been arrested, but it’s more likely than not that he was interested in sex. You have a right to privacy but not hypocrisy. During the period that I was closeted for seven years, I was always a gay rights supporter. I think it’s a fundamental violation of principles to vote one way and act another."

Following rash of gay bashings, a "safe space" opens on Oxford Street in Sydney: "Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said the City had agreed to lease a recently vacated shop front in a Council-owned building to ACON for use as a night-time Safe Space for the gay community. '“Following discussions with ACON, the City has agreed to provide the premises free of charge for ACON to use on a nightly basis,'” Ms Moore said. '“The Safe Space will act as a refuge for people who feel threatened or abused.” Residents continue to report assaults, robberies and anti-social behaviour associated with large late night licensed premises. There are ongoing reports of serious problems and people tell me that they fear for their safety.”'"

Ass-tastic: Mario Lopez lets it all hang out for Halloween.

Wentworth Miller holds on tight!

Two pink triangles from the Holocaust being auctioned in the UK: "They are expected to fetch hundreds of pounds when they go under the hammer at the Mullock's Auctioneers at Ludlow Racecourse on Thursday. Also being sold at the auction are other rare items including a description of a Spanish flu pandemic that killed millions and an apologetic letter from composer Edward Elgar."

Jesse Helms documentary comes to DVD, and includes never-before-seen interview with Matthew Shepard.

Frequent Towleroad commenter David Ehrenstein writes on "Obama's Gospel Mistake" in the L.A. Times.

Harper Lee to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Tom Ford is buying mineral rights to the land beneath his Galisteo, New Mexico ranch in order to block oil drilling: "Ford paid the state Land Office about $84,000 earlier this year to purchase the mineral rights to more than 1,400 acres, according to Land Office records. The purchase came in response to Tecton Energy's controversial proposal to drill eight exploratory wells on 65,000 acres, or 101 square miles, in the Galisteo Basin where it has acquired mineral rights." All drilling above ground is expected to continue.

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On the Stage: Black Watch

I'd like to announce a new guest blogger on Towleroad. Kevin Sessums, whom I interviewed on the site earlier this year when his memoir Mississippi Sissy was published, will now be doing theater reviews for us. Since we spoke, Mississippi Sissy has appeared on The New York Times bestseller list and was nominated for a Quill Award. Kevin was for 14 years a contributing editor of Vanity Fair magazine and for four years served in the same capacity for Allure magazine. Prior to that he was Executive Editor of Andy Warhol's Interview. This week Kevin is reviewing three new productions staged in New York, one today and two tomorrow. I'm thrilled to welcome him.

***
BLACK WATCH

Autumn in New York. Why does it seem so inviting? Autumn in New York. It spells the thrill of first-nighting.

Vernon Duke wrote the music and lyrics to that famous song for a 1934 two-act musical review on Broadway titled Thumbs Up. It opened at the St. James Theatre two nights after Christmas that year and ran until May 11, 1935. In fact, “Autumn in New York” was the review’s final big number. There were 57 members of the cast listed in the program but the only two names that Towleroad readers may recognize include the then 23-year-old Jack Cole, a dancer who went on to become a reknowned choreographer for theatre and films. Cole created the “jazz” aesthetic of show biz dancing and without him there probably wouldn’t have been a Bob Fosse or a Jerome Robbins. Marilyn Monroe adored Jack Cole after he made her look so good in Gentleman Prefer Blondes. Another name that jumped out at me in the Thumbs Up cast when I looked it up online was Eddie Dowling, who was, tens years later, the original Tom Wingfield opposite Laurette Taylor and Julie Haydon in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Dowling, who was also a producer and director, even produced the world premiere of the play in Chicago before it made that 1944 move to New York.

As the new theatre critic for Towleroad, I haven’t attended any first nights yet this autumn in New York, but I have had a few thrills already this theatre season. What follows in my reviews over the next couple of days are two, yes, thumbs ups and one sideways one. Let’s start with the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Black Watch, one of the most gut-wrenchingly, jaw-droppingly moving experiences I’ve had in over thirty years of going to the theatre in New York. Or, as Brandon, the 13-year-old Brooklynite I’ve mentored for the last five years, told me when he turned to me after the production, "That’s the bestest most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life." I wouldn’t be that hyperbolic but he’s not too far off the mark. Indeed, Sir Sean Connery so loved the production when he saw it in his native Scotland that he convinced the Scottish political powers-that-be to open their parliamentary session with a performance of the play this past summer.

Black Watch is the most buzzed about play so far this New York theatre season, having already been a much praised hit of the Edinburgh Festival in 2006. It’s scheduled to run till November 11 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. (Go online to stannswarehouse.org for ticket information and directions to the theatre.) If it’s now sold-out, which it most likely is, then beg, borrow, or steal a ticket — or go get on a waiting list the night or afternoon of a performance. I am hoping some smart producer will move this production if St. Ann’s can’t extend it for scheduling reasons.

For once, New York has been lucky enough to see an acclaimed production from England’s northern neighbor even before London has, since the National Theatre of Scotland has been having a difficult time finding the right venue for the production further south in Great Britain. Its original one at the Edinburgh Festival was done in a military drill hall and demands a kind of runway on which to perform between the audience seated on each of its sides. It was recently announced, however, that England’s National Theatre so wanted to be able to present the play that it has committed to reconfiguring its Barbican Theatre to mount the production in June 2008.

Continued (click link to jump)...

Written by Gregory Burke and brilliantly directed by John Tiffany, Black Watch has been assembled from an array of interviews with members of Scotland’s elite Black Watch military troupe regarding their service in Iraq, a deployment that ironically was its last before being amalgamated into the rest of the British army and losing its historic distinction. "Troupe" is an appropriate term to employ for this theatrical version is as cohesive as any military one.

The physicality of the actors is astounding as they are called upon to have the stamina and precision of Jack Cole dancers in the jazzy, balletic demands the production calls for without sacrificing any of the machismo posturing that is so innate to military men. At the same time, they are all so emotionally true and raw and present and downright sexy that any of them could give a nuanced performance as Tom Wingfield - or The Gentleman Caller - if the National Theatre of Scotland chooses to produce The Glass Menagerie in the future.

Two standouts are Paul Rattray as Cammy in the play’s central role, whose specific emotional journey of disillusionment is the one the audience is called upon to follow most closely. (There is an astonishing sequence one could only experience in the theatre in which the whole history of the Black Watch unit is depicted though Cammy’s narration and the utilization and manipulation of his body by all the other cast members.) The other standout is Emun Elliot who is giving an old-fashioned star-turn as the tragic Fraz.

The production also expertly employs video and music. The musical numbers are, in fact, more stirring than anything you’ll see on Broadway. The last quarter of the play had me in tears — from the moment the cast goes through a stylized, ritualistic mail call to the frenzied pugilistic male pas de deux that erupts from the stress of the battlefield to the final marching sequence that so beautifully and simultaneously displays the individual yet phalanx-like brutal love such brave warriors have for each other and - sadly and honorably - for war itself.

RATING: T T T T (4 T’s out of a perfect rating of 4)

BLACK WATCH — St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, dumboBKLYN | Box Office: 718.254.8779.

Up tomorrow, reviews of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll and Fuerzabruta.

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