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She's Always Liked the Girls Best: Lesbian Plays : Roomers/Raincheck/Hannah Free/Movie Queens
Book by Allen, Claudia
- GenresPlays
222 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 27, 2018
Chicago-based playwright Claudia Allen is one of the great unsung heroes of gay theatre. Her works carry a view of lesbian life, often in a rural setting, rarely seen in other writers (if anybody else, she reminds me of Shirlene Holmes). This collections contains four early plays ripe for revival. ROOMERS looks at the residents of a boarding house, where the owner and her best friend's daughter deal with issues of race, lookism and sexuality as they fall in love. RAINCHECK shows two former childhood friends drifting back together into a lesbian relationship in a world of abusive husbands and pitifully aging elders. HANNAH FREE deals with issues of aging within the community and the fight for equal treatment before marriage equality. In a departure from the others, SCREEN QUEENS shows two former lovers, one-time Hollywood stars, reunited for a stage production years after a bitter break-up. It's the play James Kirkwood's LEGENDS didn't have the courage to be. Somebody do these plays!
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February 2, 2026Roomers - 1 star
Raincheck - 1.5 stars
Hannah Free - 3 stars
Movie Queens - 3 stars
This was a real mixed bag in the sense that some of it was really beautiful and some of it aged absolutely terribly (there is a definite pattern of bestiality jokes throughout, as well as much, much more). It would feel disingenuous to give this a rating, given how much I hated the first two plays and how much I enjoyed the final two.
I was incredibly thrown by the use of the (hard R) N-word in Roomers. I was initially suspicious when the first hint of a character's race was a reference to cotton picking, but my uneasiness at that was sidelined by my excitement at the presence of a Black lesbian character. Any good feelings I had about the play were quashed when June - the mother of the aforementioned Black lesbian - casually refers to the father of her child as a "miserable little n___". I tried to brush it off as 'of its time', but this collection was published in the '90s and the word is used repeatedly.
Allen also brought an incest scenario into Roomers that she didn't bother to explore fully. The characters make casual, slightly mocking remarks about how they hear a brother and sister - who live in the boarding house - having sex through the walls. The sister, when she speaks, seems miserable and lonely. The brother never appears on stage, and the only conclusion that is drawn about him is that he is a bit of a scoundrel. Even after it is revealed that he is a , there is no acknowledgement that the sister - who, if I recall correctly, is the younger of the two - has actually been sexually abused.
Even without considering this, the ending of Roomers feels rushed. The sudden inclusion of murder in a play that seemed to strive for realistic quaintness really took me out of the story. This really wasn't helped by the fact that Allen didn't give herself enough time to fully address what happened. I already had a tenuous connection with the characters, leading me to wonder why the hell I should care about the plot. The ending simply caused everyone in the play to seem even less real.
The age gap between the two lesbian lovers is also of dubious morality, but I am forcing myself to assume that the younger of the two is of legal age in order to shorten this review a bit. Suffice it to say that if the rating system in my head went lower than 1 star, Roomers would get a big fat 0.
The rushed endings continue in Raincheck, whose love story is too surface-level to save it from the seemingly random inclusion of the implication of impending death.
Hannah Free is the sweetest thing ever. Although I initially had reservations about the plotline, it is done well enough to not leave me feeling annoyed or let down.
Movie Queens, which is partially set in the 1930s, somehow manages to handle race relations better than Roomers (although it is a little weird about the Spanish maid). Like Hannah Free, it is refreshingly - though not aggressively - sexual. It also features a main character mispronouncing the Spanish word for cat as gay toes, which got a little giggle out of me.
TLDR: Skip the first 115 pages.
Raincheck - 1.5 stars
Hannah Free - 3 stars
Movie Queens - 3 stars
This was a real mixed bag in the sense that some of it was really beautiful and some of it aged absolutely terribly (there is a definite pattern of bestiality jokes throughout, as well as much, much more). It would feel disingenuous to give this a rating, given how much I hated the first two plays and how much I enjoyed the final two.
I was incredibly thrown by the use of the (hard R) N-word in Roomers. I was initially suspicious when the first hint of a character's race was a reference to cotton picking, but my uneasiness at that was sidelined by my excitement at the presence of a Black lesbian character. Any good feelings I had about the play were quashed when June - the mother of the aforementioned Black lesbian - casually refers to the father of her child as a "miserable little n___". I tried to brush it off as 'of its time', but this collection was published in the '90s and the word is used repeatedly.
Allen also brought an incest scenario into Roomers that she didn't bother to explore fully. The characters make casual, slightly mocking remarks about how they hear a brother and sister - who live in the boarding house - having sex through the walls. The sister, when she speaks, seems miserable and lonely. The brother never appears on stage, and the only conclusion that is drawn about him is that he is a bit of a scoundrel. Even after it is revealed that he is a , there is no acknowledgement that the sister - who, if I recall correctly, is the younger of the two - has actually been sexually abused.
Even without considering this, the ending of Roomers feels rushed. The sudden inclusion of murder in a play that seemed to strive for realistic quaintness really took me out of the story. This really wasn't helped by the fact that Allen didn't give herself enough time to fully address what happened. I already had a tenuous connection with the characters, leading me to wonder why the hell I should care about the plot. The ending simply caused everyone in the play to seem even less real.
The age gap between the two lesbian lovers is also of dubious morality, but I am forcing myself to assume that the younger of the two is of legal age in order to shorten this review a bit. Suffice it to say that if the rating system in my head went lower than 1 star, Roomers would get a big fat 0.
The rushed endings continue in Raincheck, whose love story is too surface-level to save it from the seemingly random inclusion of the implication of impending death.
Hannah Free is the sweetest thing ever. Although I initially had reservations about the plotline, it is done well enough to not leave me feeling annoyed or let down.
Movie Queens, which is partially set in the 1930s, somehow manages to handle race relations better than Roomers (although it is a little weird about the Spanish maid). Like Hannah Free, it is refreshingly - though not aggressively - sexual. It also features a main character mispronouncing the Spanish word for cat as gay toes, which got a little giggle out of me.
TLDR: Skip the first 115 pages.
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