Gemini by Albert Innaurato (1977)

TW: Black Slurs, Homophobic Slurs, Italian Slurs, Antisemitism, Autistic Slurs, Suicide Attempts, Child Abuse, Fatphobia, Profanity

 

SYNOPSIS

            Francis Geminiani is home from Harvard on summer break and on the eve of his 21^st birthday, college friends – the siblings Judith and Randy, drop in for an unexpected visit. Francis does everything to get his WASP friends out of the Italian neighborhood by telling lies about his father and then telling lies about them to his father, but neither work. After sending Randy away to entertain the transportation enthused neighbor, Judith confesses her desire for a relationship with Francis whom she’d already slept with in event prior to the play. Francis denies her on account of being fat and ugly and then admits that he might be gay. Later it’s revealed that the boy Francis has a crush on is no other than Randy who attest that since Francis has never acted on his feelings, he might not actually be gay. Randy proceeds to strip for Francis, but they’re interrupted by Judith’s return, upset to lose the boy she’s fallen for to her brother. They argument is disrupted by Francis’s father and neighbors returning with his birthday cake to start the celebration which Francis ruins by throwing chunks of cake everywhere. The siblings decide to leave and make their arrangements and saying their goodbyes only for Francis to realize he’s been an idiot the whole time. Bunny, a neighbor, calls in favors from various uncles to have the siblings brought back and send all three of them off to the sibling’s summer home. Francis and Judith embrace and the trio runs to meet the ambulance that’ll rush them to the train.

 

CHARACTERS

Francis Geminiani – Turning 21, Plump, Italian American

Bunny Weinberger – About 40, Heavy-Set, Blowsy, Once Beautiful & Voluptuous, Now Rough Talking Alcoholic, Irish American

Randy Hastings – 19, WASP

Judith Hastings – 20, Beautiful, WASP, Aggressively Intelligent, Well Meaning

Herschel Weinberger – 16, Very Heavy, Asthmatic, Very Bright, Eccentric, Irish-Jewish American

Fran Geminiani – 45, Working Class, Boisterous, Friendly, Slightly Overweight, Mild Emphysema, Italian American

Lucille Pompi – Early 40s, Very Thin, Working Class, Lady-Like, Italian American

 

POSSIBLE MONOLOGUES

            Bunny has the first monologue. It’s about why she has to appear in court. The monologue is funny, but laden with expletives about breaking the arm of the wife of the man she’s sleeping with when they get caught in the act. She also has one about her lousy childhood but it’s supposed to be staged from high on a phone line pole that she’s about to jump off of. It ends with her telling her son to move out of the way or she’ll crush him.

            Hershel has a monologue explaining that he’s not just intrigued by the subway system but buses and trolleys as well. He talks about the trolley graveyard and how even though people make fun of them for being filthy, useless, and ugly and you get the sense that Hershel shares a camaraderie with them.

            Fran has a monologue about planting the fig tree after his wife left him, but I don’t know that a monologue about a White woman leaving the kid she had with an Italian man for not being white enough will land as well in 2021. There’s also the monologue’s lack of a proper ending since he gets distracted by Lucille trying to eat off of his plate.

            Lucille has one monologue about Francis being gay though she refers to him as being a queer as opposed to using queer as an attribute. The gist of it is that Fran has his suspicions, but would rather have a queer son than a dead one.

            Lastly, we have Francis’s monologue where he thanks everyone in the cast for how awful they are save Herschel who’s stepped away. It ends with him throwing clumps of birthday cake around the yard and Herschel reappearing having tried to kill himself by eating rat poison.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            This is one doozy of a show. It’s the fourth longest running straight play on Broadway so I assumed it was going to be amazing. It starts off as an ethnic comedy where you’ve got these two WASPs in an Italian neighborhood in South Philly, but then gets serious with the introduction of the gay subplot that doesn’t seem to be resolved by the end of the show. Judith is the one Francis embraces and they run for the train, that’s it. It’s not clear if there was a real question of homosexuality or if it was an excuse Francis was using to self-fulfill the prophecy of their relationship not working out. His other excuses are that he’s fat and ugly which ugliness is subjective and the character description does have him pudgy. There’s a chance that he’s interested in both siblings which could have been nice to explore even in a vein of taking it one step at a time.

            I was expecting Fran or one of the other adults to give Francis a lecture at the end of how stupid he’s been over the weekend to trigger his epiphany, but it seems to come more from Francis realizing he overreacted with his cake. He leaves for a walk immediately after ruining his birthday party and comes back just in time to see the siblings off and apologizes only after Judith does. It’s only when everyone starts to leave the stage that Francis realizes he doesn’t actually want to be alone and the neighborhood scrambles to help him pack so he can leave with the siblings. Although the ensuing chaos of packing for a trip in two minutes and leaving for a train that’s about to leave should be entertaining to watch, it’s a bit anticlimactic when Francis has been bottling up his feelings the whole show and never actually reveals what’s really going on with him.

            I assumed this play would never make it in recent times what with all the slurs and abuse that get used casually. Bunny tries to commit suicide but when Herschal has an asthma attack over it she chases him into the house and pushes a piano on him. In the 1977 version it’s clearly played for laughs, but there was a revival in 2018 that let room in the scenes like this for the audience to have mixed reactions. It would have been easy to make Herschal’s overweight, clumsy, and asthmatic character into a walking joke, especially since the character is supposed to be 16, but reads as if he’s a child or, more likely, autistic. From reviews of the 2018 run, they seemed to have given the character depth. I’d like to hunt down what edits they may have made. I just can’t see a show getting away with using the N word to describe the Italian lower class people speak compared to the Italian standard taught in classrooms.