SOLO SHOW
Showing @ Hill Street Theatre, 11 – 29 Aug @ 9:00pm
The tricky thing with belief systems comes with reluctant adaptation to modern norm: use of condoms, homosexuality or divorce. Instead, they breed the ideology that these things are ailments which can (and must) be cured. Even the Pope is getting down with the idea of gay marriage after meeting a couple in Connecticut last month. In the first of a three-part autobiography, Steven Fales, a self-proclaimed oxy-Mormon, performs his story from marriage to divorce, excommunication and prostitution.
If you’re expecting a satirical romp from Mormonism to a Gay Pride Parade, you’re quite wrong. Fales’s journey is much more intimate and intense. Performed as a solo-show, at a lengthy ninety minutes, it does become self-indulgent. But Steve Phales has his charming smile. The pseudo-stereotypical trait of his grin is used as a motif, denoting the ups and downs of his life between closets. His loyalty to Mormonism and his resistance to his sexuality are what make the journey interesting. Those who live without ‘faith’ (myself being one of them) find it difficult to understand a reluctance to rebel against an oppressive force such as religion. Our closest link to spirituality is the vodka we drink each Saturday night. Tolerance works both ways.
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