Lovesick: Modernest Plays Of Same-Sex (Gay) Love

The theater, with its reputation for loose sexual behavior, rejection of traditional gender and social roles, and emphasis on the imagination, has always provided a place for gay men and lesbians. From Charlotte Charke (a cross-dressing lesbian who acted and managed theaters in 18th-century London) to Oscar Wilde to contemporary "out" playwrights like Craig Lucas and Paula Vogel, the stage has been a home for same-sex love. Laurence Senelick's Lovesick is an astonishing collection of six plays that have helped, each in different ways, define 20th-century gay and lesbian drama. Amazingly, as important as these works are to gay and theatrical history, few of them have been readily available in English. Senelick, a theater historian and critic, has culled plays from the British stage (The Blackmailers was presented in London in 1894, the year before Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison), the Russian symbolist movement (Mikhail Kuzmin's 1907 play The Dangerous Precaution), and the Weimar Republic (the 1925 play Ania and Esther, by Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann and author of the novel Mephisto), as well as three others from the German, American, and French stages. The text of each play is presented in full, introduced and contextualized with copious historical notes. Senelick's research is impeccable, his prose entertaining; Lovesick is a vital contribution to both gay and lesbian studies and theater history. --Michael Bronski