‘Love! Valour! Compassion!’ Earns Every Last Exclamation Point

“Love! Valour! Compassion!” at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre is the all-too-rare play in which the characters truly inhabit life. Three hours and two intermissions flash by as if in an instant, and you leave refreshed and stimulated, mulling over the lives onstage as if you were thinking about old friends. And then you ponder what those lives say about your own.

The universality of McNally’s 1995 Tony Award-winning play astonishes given the particularity of the characters: eight upper-middle-class gay men visiting a comfortable farmhouse that one of them owns in Dutchess County, N.Y., on three successive holiday weekends.

If that wouldn’t seem to specialize the audience, you’d think that the nudity--and the amount of it (a lot)--might put people off. It doesn’t. Sometimes the characters strip for defiance, sometimes for fun, sometimes just for showing off. You couldn’t eliminate any of it without lessening the story.

Straight and gay audiences alike have embraced this play since it premiered on Broadway in 1995 (the movie version, starring Jason Alexander, is still playing in some theaters).

Much of the credit, of course, goes to McNally’s writing. He has remarkable skill at beading together the little moments that suggest the wonders of an ordinary life, the insistence pulsing between every line that attention must be paid, his unyielding obstinacy in telling us the truth, resisting every temptation to tack on the easy endings that get the smiles.

His writing also requires an excellent production to pull off the subtleties and the humor. Luckily, this twice-extended production is a superb one, a true achievement for the 10-year-old company, which bills itself as a gay and lesbian theater company but which has pulled in a big crossover audience for this show, its biggest hit.

The play begins with aging choreographer-dancer Gregory (earnest, haunted Todd Grover) welcoming the audience into his home. Soon we meet the others, including Gregory’s young, blind lover, Bobby (played with sweet vulnerability by Robert Borzych), and Perry and Arthur, longtime companions movingly played by Dan Gruber (as the uptight lawyer) and Joshua Harrell (the accountant and Perry’s emotionally accessible better half).

The narrative voice shifts seamlessly. Characters segue from conversing with one another to addressing the audience, arguing, cracking jokes, baring their souls. They leap time barriers with a single line, they tell us about things that they could not have possibly seen. And it all, amazingly, flows.

Sean Murray directs with unflinching skill while handling the tough double role of John, a cold, cutting bully who is always at the party without being part of it, and his twin brother, James, a lovable, soft-spoken queen dying of AIDS.

The character that defies all resistance is Buzz, played over the top by Tim Irving. Buzz is out there and proud of it. At intermission, the buzz was about Buzz.

Then there’s Ramon, the Puerto Rican dancer played with sexy, animal-like grace by Adam Edwards. Ramon visits as John’s lover, but with a voracious eye on fresh conquests, he is destined to upset the delicate equilibrium of the other couples.

The work stands out all the more jewel-like on Michelle Riel’s unfussy set design--a lime green stage with a few steps and jutting walls to slip behind. Judy Watson’s costumes are terrifically funny--when the company is, in fact, wearing clothes.

BE THERE

“Love! Valour! Compassion!,” Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., San Diego. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. $12-$15. Ends Aug. 9. (619) 220-0097. Running time: 3 hours, 6 minutes.