The Temperamentals

Overview

It’s a sweltering night in Brunswick, the week’s heatwave at its crest, and one has to feel for the actors gamely stepping out under the stage lights in suit jackets and ties. Still, a bit of sweat doesn’t go astray in The Temperamentals, a tale combining steamy romance and a thick atmosphere of fear.

The year is 1950, the place Los Angeles, and Harry Hay (Angelo de Cato), a gay teacher, has hit breaking point. Tired of having to conduct his romantic life in secret, Hay decides to take a stand and writes a manifesto asserting equal rights for homosexuals — the seed, he hopes, for a new civil rights movement.

The Temperamentals, penned by Pulitzer prize winning American playwright Jon Marans, is not fiction but a docudrama about the little known gay rights movement of the early fifties. Hay and his lover, Rudi Gernreich (Tim Constantine) — later an acclaimed fashion designer — founded an activist group called the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest organisations of its kind, and the play traces their often frustrating experience trying to get a public movement started among a group committed to secrecy.

Taking its name from a code word by which gay men of the time identified each other, The Temperamentals gives a nuanced account of social repression. The censure of society is depicted subtly but persistently, creating an atmosphere of constant tension. The psychological impact of repression is powerfully depicted, the characters riven by inner turmoil — themselves embedded in 1950s attitudes about masculinity and propriety, even as they struggle against them trying to establish their own identity. The interplay between the fledgeling struggle for queer rights and the other social tensions of the day, from anti-communism to endemic racism, adds another layer to the rich text too.

The Temperamentals first played in New York in 2009 and this production from local indie outfit Mockingbird Theatre is the first performance of it in Melbourne. It uses a stark set and a tight cast of five. De Cato gives a powerful turn as the seething, conflicted Hay, delightfully contrasted by Constantine as his elegant lover. The three energetic support actors (Chuck Rowland, Jai Luke and Sebastian Bertoli) do a lot of switching between minor roles early on, and it can at times be a little tricky differentiating who’s who, but the play really finds its stride once they settle into ongoing characters who are able to develop more.

The play goes from strength to strength, alive with historical detail without being weighed down by it, emotive without being heavy handed and rousing without needing to sugarcoat the fractured politics and personalities involved in the story. While there could have been better use of props, with some odd inconsistencies such as a significant costume item not being the colour the characters say it is, the performances are heartfelt, the cast very likeable and the script incisive and witty.

Whether what you want sharp social commentary or sharply dressed men getting torrid with each other, The Temperamentals delivers. It is a riveting show and one that shines a light on a fascinating slice of history.