The play’s the thing in new book ‘Gays on Broadway
‘Gays on Broadway’By Ethan Morddenc.2023, Oxford University Press$29.95/233 pages You had to look around you and check your seat.
Yep, you were still in a theater in a large building, fanny planted in a dusty red seat. You weren’t in a Brooklyn tenement or a castle, or at a society party but the performance you caught made you think you were, at least for a couple hours.
As they say, and as in the new book, “Gays on Broadway” by Ethan Mordden, the play’s the thing. Perhaps not surprisingly, the LGBTQ history of the Great White Way “starts with drag queens.” In the earliest parts of the 20th century, many comedies were written “specifically calling for a male character forced … to disguise himself as a woman,” often to the delight of audiences.
Still, any overt mention of such things was forbidden then. By the 1930s, Mordden says, “our tour mostly starts now.” Not only were audiences treated to titillating hints of gayness that were barely concealed, but the “odd gay character” often showed up in plays on purpose.
