Nothing quite prepared me for the ambition, humor, and overriding beauty of Good Time Charlie, a memory play that nods to classics like Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie but creates a vibrant contemporary world all its own. Ryan J. Haddad, best known for one-man monologues like Hold Me in the Water and explorations of life with physical disabilities such as Dark Disabled Stories, proves himself a gifted student of the theatrical tradition who has created a warm-hearted, consistently funny update on familiar dramatic tropes using his Lebanese American family in suburban Cleveland as inspiration.
Haddad, a gifted monologuist, narrates and stars as a version of himself: a boy supported from an early age in both his passion for theater and in his gay identity. In that latter regard, he has more than one mentor: There’s Aunt Janice (Beth Malone), a kind-hearted lesbian singleton, and especially his Uncle Charlie (Jonathan Raviv), a fellow theater-lover in a longtime relationship with a film professor two decades his senior, Lou (Tim Bagley). Charlie and Lou also introduce young Ryan to Sheldon (Michael Cristofer), an aesthete who curated classic films at Cleveland’s New Mayfield Cinema and who has strong opinions about all manner of artistic expression. Together, these four grown-ups demonstrate the support that one can find in a chosen family.
Charlie proves a fascinating character, a man who yearned to pursue an artistic life like his nephew eventually does but who’s thwarted in that ambition by ultraconservative parents (Nael Nacer and Artemis Perdani, who also double as Ryan’s dad and mom). Charlie Sr. and Joan dismiss Charlie’s homosexuality (“Have you changed?… Are you going to change?”) and insist that he pursue a practical career like dentistry instead of theater. (“I love purses, Charlie, but I don’t make purses,” his mom tells him. “If you stick with dentistry, you’ll have enough money to see all the theater you want.”)
It’s an attitude typical of the Midwest in the 1970s, but the couple’s rejection of Charlie’s home life lingers for decades, long after he’s settled into an apparently monogamous relationship with Lou. Still, this is also the same couple that Ryan introduces early on as enthusiastic participatants in his backyard theatrical productions as a young boy, putting on costumes and funny stage accents while providing Ryan the kind of unconditional support that they could never seem to muster for their own son.
Embracing that kind of telling contradiction distinguishes what could otherwise be a timeworn coming-out story in late-20th-century America. Also, the play benefits from Haddad’s voice: witty, wry, and indulgently self-aware. Anticipating how plays about the author’s family can stir trouble among relatives who may be only barely fictionalized, Haddad allows his characters to hijack the narrative, “rewriting” scenes before our eyes and, tellingly, allowing Charlie to refuse to replay an argument with his folks that remains painful to him.
Haddad leans into the meta elements of his script, which are amplified by some of the casting choices in director Danny Sharron’s thoughtfully staged production. At one point, an older Ryan, a new post-collegiate resident of New York City, insists to his soon-to-visit Aunt Janice that they see the Broadway musical Fun Home — the very show that earned Malone a Tony nomination for playing a lesbian cartoonist.
Good Time Charlie is a love letter to the theater in other ways, too, celebrating the ways that young theater kids like Ryan find mentors and teachers who welcome them into a world full of craft, gossip, sharp opinions, and the allure of of a glamourous world. (“Liza can do anything, but Judy could do everything,” Sheldon tells Ryan when asking about two of the biggest icons of gay aesthetes.) Cristofer’s Sheldon is a throwback delight, dropping aphoristic pronouncements like Cleveland’s own Quentin Crisp: “Outdoor theater is barbarism.”
On more than one occasion, Raviv break into song with strong, melodic voices that reinforce the plausibility of their dream of life on stage. We hear snatches of “Secret Love” from Calamity Jane and “Will You” from Grey Gardens, deployed like the references to The Glass Menagerie and classic films as markers of a certain kind of late-20th-century gay identity. (Enver Chakartash’s costumes, a mix of the dowdy and the bedazzled, add to the effect along with Afsoon Pajoufar’s foliage-festooned set.)
There’s a Midwestern big-heartedness to Haddad’s approach to his dual coming-out stories, a recognition that family can be blinkered to the obvious, but also evolve and grow in ways they don’t always fully acknowledge. There are challenges here, and real hurt, but no lingering signs of trauma. This is partly due to Haddad’s comedic gifts, lightening even intense moments with jokes. Ryan’s coming out to his parents is met with bewilderment by his dad, who swears he once caught Ryan masturbating to a picture of a woman’s “tits.” (“It was literally the head of a penis,” Ryan explains, adding that he told his dad it was breasts at the time because “I didn’t want to traumatize you twice in one minute.”)
The lack of bitterness veers toward the maudlin in the second act, where Charlie (and, by extension, Ryan) grapple with mortality and the declining health of both Sheldon and Charlie’s parents, who’ve reached a kind of begrudging acceptance of their son. Raviv captures the nuances of a man who settles into a happy life not quite like the one he’d imagined for himself, and he’s backed by a cast who perfectly reflect the flawed but basically decent characters they play. There’s an endearing generosity of spirit to Good Time Charlie that is unique and compelling, and there’s a level of artistry that is giant leaps beyond Haddad’s promising more insular work. ★★★★★
GOOD TIME CHARLIE
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through October 25 for $99