Theater Reviews : Dan Butler’s Compelling Solo Work

You recognize the type. Those biceps, that virile grip around the neck of a beer bottle, and--cutting through the bar’s noise--a macho laugh. He’s a man’s man. Then you recognize the face--Bob (Bulldog) Briscoe, the sports announcer on NBC’s “Frasier.” All right! No wonder he’s making “fag” jokes and . . . wait a minute. What’s wrong with this picture?

Nothing’s wrong with Dan Butler or with his solo show, “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me. . . . “ It’s just that this guy’s vulnerable and sensitive, not the typical pick-up artist you’d expect in a singles bar. And his opening sketch dramatizes a straight male’s realization that a childhood friend is gay. “I never would have known it,” he’s saying. Butler’s roller-coaster emotional reactions range from confusion--” You’re gay?”--to amazement--”I don’t get it!”--to acceptance--”Tell your family?”

That last question is the heart of these 14 compelling sketches about gay life. The title comes courtesy of Butler’s own confession to his father, who angrily responded: “No wonder you like the theater!” Years later, his father in turn confessed to his son: “The only thing worse that you could have told me is that you were dead.”

*

But by opening his show at Theatre Geo with a portrait of a straight male, Butler illustrates how he could conceal his identity from his family and from society. Butler plays macho more convincingly than can most straight actors, vividly demonstrating that masculinity is a state of mind, not a sexual role.

Butler’s show is his own way of professionally coming out. Butler isn’t out to prove anything other than the virtues and painful necessity of that choice. In the midst of a successful career on stage, screen and television, the gifted actor could simply keep quiet and enjoy his residual checks. But by example, Butler reveals that Hollywood’s celluloid closet is more open than ever before, even though homophobia continues in the general culture.

Butler resembles a gay Eric Bogosian as he mixes autobiographical tales with invented characters. Versatile, vulnerable, virile and athletic, Butler can pose as a lisping opera queen one moment, then remember being a Little Leaguer in Fort Wayne, Ind., admiring a male dancer. His All-American, Midwestern good looks add to the show’s impact: He’s Everyman. If former pro football athlete and gay activist Dave Kopay were a performance artist, this might be his style of show.

Director Randy Brenner maintains a low-key tone, employing only a few props while maintaining Butler’s soft-spoken humorist style. The jokes are numerous, the insights abundant--none better than when Butler plays an actual tape-recorded conversation with his mother. “I don’t condemn it,” his mother says of his homosexuality. “I don’t condone it. I don’t understand it.”

His show is Butler’s attempt to help everyone understand “it.”

* “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me . . . ,” Theatre Geo, 1229 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 21. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.