World premiere of “Stonewall” poignant, pointed and timely | Review

It’s heartening when the area’s smaller theaters take on epic projects. Even moreso when they pull back the curtain on the stories of marginalized people.

Aurora’s Vintage Theatre recently produced “The Inheritance,” Matthew Lopez’s gay-male tribute to E.M. Forster’s novel “Howard’s End.” The six-plus hour two-parter won the Tony for the best play in 2020. Now, Lakewood’s Benchmark Theatre is giving “Stonewall” — the history play about the events that launched the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement —  its world premiere.

With 24 actors, the drama about the 1969 clash between the police and the patrons of the Stonewall Inn boasts the largest cast that the intimate black box theater just off Colfax has staged. The show’s producer joked that the first two nights of the run (through July 1) were sold out because every cast member had at least five friends who came. That may have been the case opening weekend, but there are plenty of other reasons for the engaging one-act to keep attracting theatergoers.

In bringing the Stonewall Rebellion to the stage, artistic director Neil Truglio and co-writers Samwell Rose, Frankie Lee and the ensemble have gifted Pride Month a timely work that delves into the flashpoint that ignited thousands of marches, parades and Pride months. Reflecting current conversations, the show reminds audiences that transgender and BIPOC activists (often one and the same) were there on Day 1 as the police again raided the Christopher Street watering hole. So were young street kids (who would now likely identify as “gender non-conforming”), as was one lesbian, according to accounts. Who she was, however, is contested. And the play doesn’t jibe with all of the historical records.

Before the play begins in earnest; before Martin Boyce (Dan O’Neill), Martha Shelley and Michelle Beyer begin recounting the phobic constraints of the era and what they participated in during those fateful nights; before former New York City deputy inspector Seymour Pine gives his own accounting, the sizable ensemble begins to congregate.

The stage includes the bar; the Stonewall jukebox, itself a thing of legend; a park bench, presumably on Christopher Street; the conference room of the Mattachine Society, which they share with a regular gathering of the lesbian rights group the Daughters of Bilitis; and the office of the alternative weekly newspaper, the Village Voice.

It’s a lot of people, and makes for a strong and elegant tableau, one that even includes a lounging beat cop. Truglio, who designed the production in addition to directing it, makes Benchmark’s stage appear vast. Not unlike the LGBTQ community, it contains multitudes.

Drag queens Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia “Bertie” Rivera are here. The two transgender activists are portrayed with sass and had-enough-ism by Danté Finley and Johnathan Underwood. (RuPaul has hailed Johnson as “the True Drag Mother”; David France’s 2017 rending and revealing documentary “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” is streaming on Netflix.)

The business-attired men of the Mattachine Society (referred to here, perhaps too dismissively, as “an assimilationist organization”) gather to write leaflets and strategize. When Mayor John Lindsay sends an emissary in hopes of quelling the ongoing protests, it’s to proposition this collection of presentable thirtysomething white men. The writers of “Stonewall” have been more inclusive than that first night might have been. It’s the writers’ way of representing all the different people who had been working for rights and would go on to agitate for equality at the time of the uprising. Also on hand: the reporters Lucian Truscott (Andrew Hensel) and Howard Smith (Andrew Catterall) from the “Voice.” Corey Exline portrays their colleague, the arts and culture writer and firebrand Jill Johnston.

Much about that first June night and the ensuing five has become the stuff of legend, though there have started to be better-verified histories. The role of the Village Voice in the play underscores just how sorry the coverage by the mainstream media of gay and lesbian lives was at the time. (My old stomping grounds, the Voice, was there at least but gets appropriately singed for some of the demeaning tropes in its coverage.)

“Stonewall” isn’t a perfect play. The language of the three elders who recall the events of June 28 to July 3, 1969 doesn’t nail the tension between now and then. Still, the play is powerful as it reflects and refracts a pioneering moment in American history.

What does impress is the stagecraft. Truglio has a visual way with the plays he helms. The gestures he employs — often visual but also sound-driven — aren’t cinematic exactly, but they are striking. He uses strobe effects to slow and heighten the violence of the clashes. He also gets thoughtful or funny or raging work from many in the cast. And I don’t recall seeing a more endearing performance of youthful inebriation than Caden Pazo’s feisty and slurry young’un Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt. His words carry anger but also joy. And from the first Pride march that marked the year anniversary of Stonewall, that dance between the two has been the way.

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