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October 20-26, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 37
Dynamic duo Wilson Cruz & Scott Nevins join forces by Adam Sandel
W
ilson Cruz and Scott Nevins met across a crowded teadance floor on Fire Island more than five years ago. “I’d known about him for years, and I had a total crush on him,” says Nevins. “They were playing Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer’s ‘Enough is Enough.’” “It was gay magic,” says Cruz. Little did the actor and comedian know that they’d be teaming up to pool their talents one day, but that’s exactly what the two friends will be doing this coming Wed., Oct. 26, at the Rrazz Room in San Francisco. “He does his comedy, then I do a couple of songs, then he interviews me on stage,” says Cruz. “You never know what the heck is going to come out of our mouths.” The duo’s show will premiere at the Rrazz Room before heading to Fort Lauderdale and points beyond. “People don’t realize that he’s got a gorgeous singing voice,” Nevins says
of Cruz, who first became known as the gay teen Rickie Vasquez on TV’s My So-Called Life, prior to roles on ER, Ally McBeal, The West Wing, Noah’s Arc, Grey’s Anatomy and the role of Angel in Rent on Broadway. Both men are openly gay performers who have been active participants at LGBT events, including numerous GLAAD Media Awards. Cruz came out at age 19 while appearing on My So-Called Life. “I wanted the role to resonate with people, and I wanted to prove that as an actor I could come out and still have a successful career,” he says. “People in the industry want to put you in [casting] boxes to make their jobs easier. But I’ve been able to do film, theatre and TV, doing projects that are important to me. Even if I play gay roles for the rest of my life, I can still play a lot of different types of characters.” As a celebrity interviewer and red-carpet host turned comedian, Nevins has appeared on television
Actor Wilson Cruz.
Comedian Scott Nevins.
and online venues including TV Land and Smoking Gun Presents. He had a different motivation for coming out. “I came out publicly at age 21 or 22. It was something I wanted to use in my standup act. I’m a firm believer in honesty on stage,” he says. “[Being gay] is not who I am, it’s a part of who I am. I don’t play
other people, I play myself. And I’ve had incredible opportunities come from it.” Both have been advocates for gay youth, including speaking engagements at high schools and colleges. Because of his AfroPuerto Rican background, Cruz feels a special affinity for gay youth of color, and cites Rita Moreno as
one of his primary role models. “She’s had a great stage, screen and television career – and as a Latina, she’s had to deal with a lot of similar issues that I’ve had to deal with as a gay man.” As others have opened doors for Cruz, he hopes to pass the baton to younger gay performers like Glee’s Chris Colfer, whom he’s met at GLAAD events. “He has a great head on his shoulders and makes no apologies,” says Cruz. “He doesn’t need my advice!” But when young gay people or aspiring gay performers do seek Cruz’s advice, he tells them, “Keep doing what you’re doing, live out loud in your body, and enjoy every minute.”▼ Wilson Cruz & Scott Nevins, Wed., Oct. 26 at 8 p.m., Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., SF. Tickets: $30-$35 at www.therrazzroom.com or call (800) 380-3095
Joan Marcus
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Hair
From page 25
in as well. My goal was to make the story much more apparent, to create a through-line for a modern-day audience.” That basic story, which runs through many detours, focuses on the characters Claude (Rado’s role in the original Broadway production) and Burger (played by co-author Ragni). The more freespirited Burger is trying to convince Claude that he should evade the draft, which will lead to certain deployment in Vietnam, while trying to convince himself that the turn-on-drop-out party will never end as various members of the Tribe, as the cast is called, reflect on issues both personal and political. The main characters vaguely mirrored Rado and Ragni themselves, with Rado having set out for a traditional acting career after a stint in the Navy, while Ragni was more into the downtown theater scene. Their relationship was both professional and deeply personal, though the only label Rado is willing
to apply to himself is “omnisexual.” “The thing about Gerry and I is that we had a deep love for each other,” Rado said. “It went beyond the physical. And that’s what’s at the core of the show. In the current production, there is a lot of physical touching between Claude and Burger, which we didn’t have in the original. I think that is very liberating.” The new revival wasn’t the first try at bringing Hair back to Broadway. A 10th anniversary edition managed only 43 performances (in contrast to the original’s 1,750 and the revival’s 586). “It fizzled,” Rado said. “It was a very strange period. First of all, we could not find any male actors with long hair, so everybody had to wear a wig. And then we had to replace the actors playing Burger and Claude during previews, and the people we ended up with were not satisfactory at all.” It may also have lacked the sincerity communicated by the original cast, and that seems to have been recaptured in the new production. “I remember that [New York Times
critic] Clive Barnes said back in 1967 that the Tribe was like ‘peppy little protons.’ It was this energy, this sincerity, this belief in ideals that the audience could feel. I think we have that again.” While Hair has dominated Rado’s life for the past 40-plus years, he’s still a working writer. He will introduce a recording in a darkened theater of the musical Sun, which he began with Ragni, as part of New York’s Howl Festival this month, and still hopes the show described as “a comicOrwellian epic struggle between the nuclear gods and the natural gods” will eventually receive a live staging. And he has a producer committed to a workshop production of American Soldier that he described as a “political, fantastical musical about a soldier returning from Iraq who goes to the White House to see the president.” But first there was the immediate matter of getting to Manhattan so he could participate in the Occupy Wall Street protest. “They’re talking about the corruption of the system,” Rado said. “I wish we could say things have changed since we first wrote Hair, but still you can’t stop trying. At least, I can’t.”▼ BARstage@comcast.net
BroadwayWorld.com
James Rado, co-author and an original star of Hair, joined the cast at the curtain call for the final performance of the Broadway revival.
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