Love! Valour! Compassion!

Love! Valour! Compassion!
by Joe Mantello

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Movie Reviews of Love! Valour! Compassion!

Movie Review: Watch This With One You Love!
Summary: 5 Stars

This is not a production for the close minded, or children.
Ramon returns from skinny dipping in the lake with only a big towel draped loosely over his shoulder, his short muscled body exhibiting all its Latin splendor. The show is on.
L!V!C! allows audiences a glimpse into the usually disdained world of every day gay life, giving them the opportunity to laugh nervously and to glance at their partner's responses. Once settled in, the production shows that gay and straight lives are roughly similar. This play is certainly reminiscent of The Big Chill.
Bobbie turns in a stunning performance as Gregory's blind lover. His hesitancy at movement, stammering articulation and resistance to pandering by his friends works. Not to mention his naked, practically hairless blond body, complete with a kneeling scene on the lake raft with his tight posterior pointed directly at the audience. Blindness obviously keeps him from visualizing his less than attractive lover.
Gregory is an over the hill choreographer who owns a fabulous country house to which the six friends retire on weekends from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Gregory is in search of his final routine, yet dispenses his energy in fear of Bobbie leaving him. In the end he finds his final piece while finding his body to fatigued to perform it. Thankfully, Gregory's nakedness is exposed only in the ending scene.
All the actors played their roles superbly. Yet, in every production, one must shine (even more that Bobbie's gorgeous ass and Ramon's muscled body) and that one is the musical trivia champion, Buzz. With boundless energy, the flaming musical queen bounces about with wit and compassion. His act is a dramatic cover for his tragedy of living a loveless life with AIDS. Yet in the end, even he finds a purpose; caring for the cold and heartless John Jeckyll's brother James. James dissolves from a friendly, caring antithesis of John to soiling himself in a canoe.
Each of the characters and themes will touch the audience differently. Arthur and Perry touched me most closely as they showed me more of my relationship with each passing act. A humorous scene in their car on the way to the country house and a touching scene of each trimming the other's ear hairs, brings an insight of things gays really do together. Opposed to what some think we spend all our time doing.
In the beginning you may be edgy at the in your face frontal nudity. You will quickly settle into the fun and feeling of the production. Finally, you are left honestly and compassionately understandng many of the very questions, concerns and frustrations most gay men encounter in their search for meaning, and the end.

Summary of Love! Valour! Compassion!