Micah and I went to see the Roundabout’s excellent revival of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger on Friday night. Sitting directly behind us was a young straight couple, and the male half made his displeasure known immediately: “Oh, man, they’re British?” he asked his girlfriend at full volume. “This is boring. Can we go?” She told him they could go at intermission, so at each scene change, as if willing it to happen, he’d say, “Intermission!”
“This is boring, let’s go, let’s go, I’m bored,” he kept saying. Finally, one of the characters said (and I paraphrase), “I heard from Helena,” and another said, “Helena who?” and the guy behind us said, “Helena Rigby!”
WHICH ISN’T EVEN THE NAME OF THE SONG.
Micah looked back at him, theater aficionado code for kindly shut up, you are not in your living room, and in response the guy said, “Faggot.” The air around us went dead. “What?” Micah asked, in disbelief. “You faggot,” the guy repeated, “turn and look at me again. Turn and look at me again and I’ll knock you out.”
Micah and I faced the stage, both in shock. Now, I’m terrible with confrontation. I much prefer an icy dinner party where, say, my uncle’s new girlfriend is being openly ignored by the entire family. Micah, on the other hand, fashions himself a gay sheriff and thrives on the thought of justice being served — I still chill at the memory of a heated interchange he had with the manager of a shady smoothie place – so I thought to myself, there’s going to be a fight, my glasses are going to get broken, and everyone in this theater is going to hear me scream for help and think an elderly woman’s husband needs a doctor.
The guy continued to rant to his girlfriend: “He takes it in the ass, but he turns and looks at me? Fuck that. Fuck that.” And he just kept going, emitting little angry blips every two minutes: “Fucking queer. (two minutes) Fucking snob.”
Finally they zipped up their coats and left. We allowed ourselves to breathe again and, for the first time in thirty minutes, paid attention to the play. We’d missed some really key contextual shading, and a whole new character was onstage (“Helena Rigby,” if you will), but to the production’s credit we were easily drawn back in. At intermission two adorable nearby straight guys informed us that they would’ve had our back had things escalated. Nice to know, and hopefully the girlfriends at their side, endeared by their mates’ modernity, rode them after with extra liberal arts vigor.
Two things in closing. First of all, taking it in the ass is extremely painful and therefore anyone who can withstand it is REALLY FUCKING TOUGH*. Second, I don’t know for a fact that one of the slurs he hurled was “snob.” It is, after all, a five-dollar word, and I’m pretty sure he spent his five dollars on tolls coming in through the Lincoln Tunnel.
* Except for me. I am not tough.
