Francis Price (left) is New Dog and James Patrick Nelson is Old Dog in The Variant Strain, a one-act by Jim Petosa and Jonathan Adler on the double bill of Reverse Transcription.
For theater aficionados, the summer visits of Potomac Theatre Project to the Atlantic Theater are bracing—weighty pieces rather than fluffy fare. British writers, often well-represented, comprise one evening this year, but two American plays comprise the second. A revival of Dog Plays, a 1989 one-act with snapshot scenes that focus on the AIDS crisis, is by Robert Chesley, who wrote it after receiving “the diagnosis.” (He died in 1990.) It has been dusted off and paired with a new play, A Variant Strain, by writer-director Jim Petosa and Jonathan Adler, that is indebted to the older work.
In San Francisco in 1989, Dog (a tall, lanky James Patrick Nelson) is rattled as he addresses the audience: he has just glimpsed a ghost. “I know I’ve seen him, and I know where I’ve seen him, but I didn’t ever expect to see him again,” says Dog. “I didn’t expect to see him again because the last time I saw him … he didn’t look like he would live this long.” Nelson delivers his long opening monologue with a voice of splendid resonance: urgency, shock, and worry infuse the words, along with a sense of dislocation amid the spiraling totals of AIDs victims in the 1980s.
During a conversation in their minds, Dog remembers his nonsexual encounters in the Castro district with Buck (Joshua Mallin), the other man, but he doesn’t recall everything; Buck remembers an intense sexual relationship, and Chesley’s rhapsodic writing of it is frankly homoerotic and highly charged, perhaps inspired by a scene in Martin Sherman’s Bent a decade earlier.
Nelson as Old Dog with Joshua Mallin as Buck in Robert Chesley’s The Dog Plays. Photographs by Stan Barouh.
In the second scene, at a memorial exhibition, Dog meets a hospital nurse named Fido (Jonathan Tindle), who is contemplating the face of Rover, who was once Dog’s roommate. He and Rover never had sex, Dog tells Fido, “but he held me all night, once, when I needed it, needed it badly, needed to be held.” The scene of regret and turmoil is beautifully played, as are Tindle’s skepticism and frustration at seeing so many gay men die in his hospital.
Chesley’s last scene is a reverie in Dog’s mind, as his young lover, Lad (Trey Atkins), articulates a desperation to leave San Francisco. Lad talks about following the sun and heading north to find a place among all the gay brothers he has loved and lost. It’s a difficult scene, and Atkins does the best he can, but it doesn’t have the force of the first two scenes, perhaps because the visionary quality and a self-conscious poeticism are pushed too far.
Using Chesley’s work as a jumping-off point, A Variant Strain focuses on gay men in the age of Covid. Promiscuity is back. A young gay nurse, a.k.a. New Dog, has just had anonymous sex; his next hook-up turns out to be Old Dog—or perhaps the ghost of Old Dog. They inevitably discuss the dangers of Covid.
New Dog: It’s bad. Worse than anything, ever. You have no idea.
Old Dog: Oh, I think I do.
New Dog: No, really, it’s horrible. It’s not like anything that’s ever come before.
There’s irony in the humor here, but it’s too easy: in the age of social media, New Dog’s cluelessness is hard to swallow; it helps a lot that Francis Price plays it with engaging sincerity. In scene 2 a new Fido (Ryan Kirby), another nurse, runs into New Dog at their hospital. New Dog expounds on theories he’s read, one of which gives the production its umbrella title:
New Dog: “This one doc thinks that Covid doesn’t only use the host’s cells as a vehicle, but actually inserts its RNA into the host’s DNA. That’s just like HIV.
Fido: “Reverse transcription. Literally changes the cell’s story.”
Of course, changing the story is what Adler and Petosa are doing to Chesley, but not that much. The parallels between the two works become a bit schematic when, in the final scene, Old Dog and New Dog reconnect, and Old Dog is the one looking to head north. The newer play unabashedly embraces a morbid romanticism, as the characters’ lives and dreamlike connections take on a cosmic aura:
New Dog: I wish you were really here, Dog.
Old Dog: I am. Always was… always will be.
New Dog: Like the stars?
Old Dog: If you want them to … if you need us…we will brighten that dark sky for you.
In spite of some predictability in A Variant Strain, Petosa and Adler deserve credit for unearthing Chesley’s earlier work and for creating their own compelling glimpse of gay life in the Covid era. Together, the plays make a rewarding evening, spurring contemplation and melancholy on a summer night.
Potomac Theatre Project’s Reverse Transcription plays in repertory with Sex, Grift, and Death at the Atlantic Theater, Stage 2 (330 W. 16th St.) through July 30. For tickets and information, visit ptpnyc.org.
