TOSOS starts the New Year with a World Premiere! Pride House is the brand-new Chris Weikel play showing now through February 10, 2024 and You! Must! Be! There!
Cherry Grove, Fire Island 1938.  Not yet the flaming Grove we know and love, a house party of artsy friends think they’re in for a good time far from the madding crowd.  The Long Island vacationers are a looking for sun and sand but don’t care where the boys are.  When these two worlds collide, it may be what actually caused the hurricane, known as The Long Island Express.  It was a category 3 storm with sustained winds up to 120mph, yet it was no match for the winds of change that followed.
Beatrice and Thomas Farrar (Jamie Heinlein and Patrick Porter) are the nominally cis-hetero couple who were formerly married and together own Pride House, an actual house in Cherry Grove by the way.  They  populate it with hmmm, “theatrical” and “artistic” types who love doing tableaux and who sway across many of the Maginot lines of social mores of the time.  These fun-loving men and women are a contrast with their Long Island neighbors who even in the early part of the last century were working to save the children, though from what is difficult to say.
Chris Weikel is a formidably talented playwright.  The conversations ring true for anyone with a similar coterie of friends.  Plucked out of time and space, we learn that only times change, people don’t really.  His Grove denizens include the handiest of men, Poppy Frederick (Dontonio Demarco) who can transport or locate whatever you need.  Irene and George Gerard (Gail Dennison and Desmond Dutcher) are the actual cis-hetero couple trying to preserve the Grove for the “right” people, while closeted lesbian Natalia Danesi Murray (Jessica Disalvo) has her European origins for the Gerards to attribute her differences, dancer Edwin Marshall (London Carlisle) has to endure indignities in town when he doesn’t “stay in his place”.  Impresario/designer Arthur Brill (Tom Souhrada) and is part of the gang and he orchestrates Edwin, the louche Stephen (Jake Mendes) and hunky Brad (Alex Herrera) while author and magazine writer John Mosher (Aaron Kaplan) moons over Thomas as the one who kinda got away even as Brad is mooning over John.  But then what is Summer love without a triangle?
Maxine (Raquel Sciacca) and Hugo (Calvin Knegten) are royalty whose parents are on the mainland while the children frolic in the surf.  Worldly and wise beyond the years of their American counterparts, these citizens of the world remind us that children and their fresh perspectives always belong with us. 
Clever and thought provoking, the more things change the more we need to commit to assuring the positive changes continue.  Igor Goldin’s direction and the brilliantly talented cast and crew whipped up this gem and it is far more than a tempest in a teapot.  Evan Frank’s set, Ben Philipp’s spot-on costumes combine with David Castaneda’s Lighting and Morry Campbell’s sound to take us back in time.  See this show.

Pride House is playing now through February 10, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:00pm.  Get there early and have an adult beverage while you dream of Summers yet-to-be.  Visit now to get your tickets at https://www.tososnyc.org/pride-house.