The Last Sunday in June

by Jonathan Tolins

Jonathan Tolins's hilarious and poignant play The Last Sunday in June follows in the tradition of The Boys in the Band and Love Valour Compassion Set in a Greenwich Village apartment, Michael and Tom plan to spend Gay Pride Day contemplating their move to the suburbs. But with the parade happening outside their window, friends drop by, igniting a chain of events that rocks the foundations of their relationship. Also included in this collection are If Memory Serves, a satire of repressed memory and celebrity scandal, and The Twilight of the Golds, the controversial Broadway play about genetics and homosexuality that was the basis for the Showtime film starring Brendan Fraser and Faye Dunaway.

Genres: Plays

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the center of this comedy-drama, which takes its title from the more-or-less official date of New York City's Gay Pride Celebration, is the story of Michael and Tom, a gay couple of long-standing (seven years) who are about to move out of the city and into a house in the suburbs. Though the two men seem devoted enough to each other and to the idea of eternal bliss forever in the country, the strains on their relationship are nevertheless evident: Michael wants to go to Pottery Barn to buy new lamps, while Tom prefers to entertain friends who have come to watch the Gay Pride Parade from Michael and Tom's centrally-located Christopher Street apartment.

Their relationship continues to unravel as assorted friends and ex-lovers drop by; but each also brings his own perspective about the gay lifestyle--whatever that is. Indeed, one of the strengths of Tolins's work is the way it debunks the notion of a single meaning to that term, even as its characters try to work one out. In contrast to the steadfastly coupled (monogamist?) Michael and Tom are Joe, a much younger recent arrival to town, who is eagerly embracing all of the social and sexual choices offered to him by the big city; Brad, a caustic best-friend type who seems to be forever on the make, notwithstanding his medical condition (HIV+) and his low self-esteem; Charles, a generation older than our protagonists, a presumably mature and comfortable survivor of the Gay Liberation Movement who nevertheless feels a lot like a refugee from The Boys in the Band; and James, Tom's former lover who has come to feel more and more of an outcast in the gay world. It is James who serves as catalyst for the play's most compelling plot twist, as he announces to Tom and the others that he has decided to marry a woman, so that he can at least have companionship as he nears middle age.

Tolins also employs a device that could all by itself be framework for a different play--the post-modern notion that the men "know" that they are characters in a "gay play," which sets the most stereotypically campy of them (Brad, Charles, and Joe) onto flights of fancy that poke fun at the gay theatrical canon from Boys in the Band to Party. It's cute, but it's self-conscious, and it derails Tolins's sturdier play ideas.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok, cliché... some cute lines but overall, typical gay play