Gently Down the Stream (The Public Theater) by Martin Sherman

This is both a beautifully told love story and a revisiting of some of the most harrowing moments in the struggle for gay rights.

 Harvey Fierstein’s Beau is a 60-something pianist living in London in the early 2000’s whose first-hand knowledge of Mabel Mercer and James Baldwin are cat-nip to the eccentric young lawyer, Rufus.  Gabriel Ebert’s Rufus is a young, handsome one-night-stand for Beau in the dawn of internet dating who becomes his lover, his roommate, his love.

Beau is steeped in alcohol, melancholy and memories; many so painful that his retelling of them in a sort of ‘documentary’ filmed by Rufus will bring tears to your eyes.  They are memories of intolerance, persecution and plague.  They are memories of a life only partially lived; cloaked in shadow and silence and sorrow.

Rufus has his own demons; the manic thrills and morbid depths of bi-polar depression plague him.  Beau’s own traumas have wounded him deeply but also given him enough empathy to hold tight when Rufus goes down.

After many years together during which Beau constantly urges Rufus to find someone his own age and turns down Rufus’ proposal of a ‘civil’ partnership when it becomes available, Rufus does find that younger man.  Christopher Sears plays Harry, a performance artist, with balls-to-the-wall intensity.  His is a youth that is as vibrant as his multiple tattoos and as fierce as his recovery from a drug addiction. 

This is not a story of lost love, however, as Rufus and Harry get married with Beau as their best man and have a child with whom the ever aging Beau can’t help falling in love. Rufus and Harry encourage Beau to revisit the scene of a horrible loss to commemorate it and, perhaps, get some closure.  Beau uses Rufus’ desire for him to be their best man to get Rufus to take the medication that he so desperately needs. 

These three actors make you care that Gently Down the Stream’s gloriously flawed humans form a loving and supportive family who help each other to cope with the present and deal with the past.  If only every square-peg-in-a-round-hole person could be so lucky.