Traveling Light, or the second most fun I've had in a cemetery

I really enjoyed this show, in which Theatre Pro Rata borrowed the Layman's Cemetery to stage a late night meeting between playwright Joe Orton and Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1967 London, a few weeks before their ghastly deaths. For this one night, Epstein and Orton get to discuss art, sex, identity and clothes, and a taste of a world in flux as they argue, exchange clothes, and tangle with the police. It ties the deafening scream following the Beatles to beginning the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the larger and brighter world we find ourselves in when the violence of control is banished by the light. It achieved this best through WPC Foster laying bare the tragedy of Orton and Epstein's deaths, making me ache to see them finish what they'd started, plundering a sweet grave and birthing something beautiful with Orton's edge and Epstein's finesse, driven by the romantic power of the Beatles, and maybe also through the grotesque metaphor of the title.

But actually never mind about all that, that's not really the reason to go see it. Go see it because it's fun. Go see it because it's moving. Go see it because it's funny. Go see it because it just works.. putting so much dated counter-culture kitsch into one play, from the Beatles to swinging 60's London to nasty bathhouse humor to a gimmicky setting and the safe culture wars of a half century ago under the banner of the Sgt. Pepper's cover in most hands would make for a deathly tiresome masturbatory fantasy, but in this case playwright Lindsay Harris Friel and Theatre Pro Rata find the heart in all of it that drives the pulse of a bloody, sweaty breathing play. The kind of play that delights as it gently tugs on the creases of the brain, adding like a dream to our memories. It's the kind of show that makes me want to go home and write, until I remember I burned out long ago and I have nothing left to say.

So yeah, I liked it. Maybe it's just that the button-down chick with handcuffs in the graveyard was a deep scoop through the memories of another time in my life when I stood closest to love and art and death, so I hope others will try it and decide for themselves. I do recommend a bit of bug spray, and perhaps not drinking a liter of water then forgetting to scout out a bathroom beforehand... when I got out everything was closed, and by the time I caught my train home my back teeth were floating. (That may have been more information than anybody required.) And if you do take a chance, consider the worst case scenario is you have a cool hipster story about attending a show in the graveyard, right?*

More details and a study guide are available on Pro Rata's website:
http://www.theatreprorata.org/home.htm

*-Actually the worst case scenario would be my friend who may have gotten bit by a bat and may also be hallucinating the presence of a giant clown in her backseat, but I think it's still worth it.