Couples traveling together to Thailand this month can speed their way through the traffic at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport faster than you can say, “no tuk tuk, no massage.†Register at one of the “Amazing Thailand, Amazing Romance†counters – located on both the East and West concourses – by providing some basic information and receive a heart-shaped sticker and a key chain with the Thailand tourism mascot, Sook Jai, which entitles couples to use the “premium lane†for a fast track through the notoriously congested immigration process. Befitting a country known for its embrace of a third gender, the program applies to same-sex couples, too. I think I feel an emoticon coming on.
You let down your people, Evita. You were supposed to have been immortal. That’s all we wanted – not much to ask for. Ok, maybe quoting Che Guevara’s sardonic funeral oration for Argentina’s first lady is a bit misdirected. To my mind Evita is immortal – but that’s in large part thanks to Hal Prince’s seminal production of a generation ago,  not to mention the star-making performances of Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin. (Yes, I age myself – at this point it’s unavoidable.) The question remains: is it Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita that we should cry for in its first ever Broadway revival or is it director Michael Grandage’s shambolic production? Does the fault lie with Elena Roger, the tiny-voiced, diminutive Argentine actress in the titular role? Or perhaps pop star Ricky Martin, who as the de-politicized Narrator née Guevara looks wholly uncomfortable in his own skin. Even Rob Ashford’s usually reliable choreography must come in for a bashing: in one number, The Art of the Possible, Juan Peron deftly vanquishes one general after another to propel himself into power. How does Ashford stage this? By having them awkwardly enact a series of half hearted Greco-Roman wrestling moves. It’s symbolic: this production flirts with a number of interesting ideas that get neither fully developed nor wholly abandoned, they just lie there like so much stagnant water. It’s hard to squarely pin the blame on any one individual because across the board everyone is off their game here, save the suave and golden-throated Max Von Essen as tango singer, Augustin Magaldi. It’s difficult to not feel for the two leads, either: Martin’s lack of stage experience isn’t served by stripping him of any discernible character. (The shift from Che Guevara to an anodyne Narrator is inexplicable. Are we to blame the anti-Castro theatergoing lobby?) And Roger tries hard but she lacks the powerhouse voice the role demands. Ultimately what this pointless revival makes all too clear is that at the Marquis Theatre there’s a thin line between immortality and ignominy.
This isn’t a political blog by any means. It’s a travel blog. Yet it’s difficult to silently stand back and watch what is going on in one of my favorite cities in the world, St. Petersburg, Russia. In less than one week, lawmakers in St. Petersburg could silence millions of people by making it a crime to read, write or even discuss anything involving homosexuality. That’s right, a crime. Calls and letters have rolled in from around the world, but it’s not enough. So with your help, we’re going to hit the Governor of St. Petersburg where it counts: the pocketbook. Russia recently announced that it wants to spend $11 billion dollars over the next few years to attract tourists in concert with the forthcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. We need to let the Governor of Peter the Great’s cosmopolitan “window on the west” know that we won’t go there if he turns the town into a gloomy center of censorship and intolerance. Russia’s second largest city thrives on its artistic reputation to attract tourists from around the world – a reputation that’s impossible to reconcile with a law that will muzzle artists, writers, musicians and ordinary citizens who live in – or visit – the city. Imagine for a moment the new Saint Petersburg, where an empowered “thought police” can fine you for any mention of the well-known fact that famed Russian composer Tchaikovksy, a Saint Petersburg native, was gay. Gogol himself couldn’t have created a more ridiculous mise-en-scene. And yet it is well on the way to becoming reality. Please, take a minute to tell Governor Poltavchenko “I won’t go there” if the bill passes. He holds the power to veto this bill – a law that will not only censor millions but also silence any and all human rights organizations in Russia fighting for equal rights. The great city of Pushkin, Akhmatova, Rastrelli and Brodsky has at times in history been shelled, strangled and besieged. To now silence it would be the cruelest injustice of all.
Nicely tying up my time in Jamaica with a rainbow, my final day on the island coincides with an announcement by the Jamaican LGBT rights group J-FLAG of a television campaign aimed at encouraging Jamaicans to love and support their LGBT family members. The US Ambassador to Jamaica, Pamela E Bridgewater, addressed a packed audience at the launch of the public service announcement, Unconditional Love, stating that “homophobia must be eliminated immediately, [because] as President Obama says, no one should be hated because of who they love.” Featuring Christine Straw, former Miss Jamaica World and Miss Jamaica Universe, and her gay brother Matthew Straw, the video is a public declaration of love and acceptance – not the typically bigoted rhetoric one has come to expect publicly from the island’s leaders. As a step toward greater visibility, the effects of the PSA can’t be underestimated. For too long people have dwelt in the fear of what they don’t know: when it comes home to roost that’s no longer a valid excuse. Change, it seems, is finally coming to Jamaica – whether people like it or not.
The phrase “mixed feelings” doesn’t do justice to my long-held antipathy toward the island of Jamaica. Ever since dancehall artist Buju Banton had a late-80’s hit with the song Boom Bye Bye, which not only incited but also openly celebrated the murder of homosexuals, the country has been at the top of my shortlist of places to avoid. Jamaican criminal code prohibits sex between men (but not women, natch) and neither of the island’s political parties shows any support for gay rights. Moreover, according to both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the country remains one of the most homophobic places on earth. What has long irked me, however, is the tourism industry’s perspicacity in the selling of Jamaica as a carefree, inclusive society – a marked contrast to the reported high incidence of anti-gay violence and a widespread social conservatism fueled by religious zealotry and the economic fallout from globalization. Yet as I mature – somewhat glacially, I’ll admit – I see in the last half of that sentence the unintentionally ironic parallels to our own social failings and am reminded of reading an interview with UK activist Peter Tachell, who claims that homophobia is a 19th-century concept brought by British colonizers and Christian missionaries and not an authentic expression of Jamaican culture. Perhaps if I stop my finger pointing long enough I’ll find out for myself. Which is why, dear readers, I am currently on a plane to a place I never thought I’d go. And feeling so very – visibly – gay.
Proudly powered by WordPress
Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.