The Madness of Lady Bright

The play consists primarily of a monologue delivered by the aging drag queen Leslie Bright, reflecting on the passions of his life. These include his attempts at self-invention, modeled on such figures as Miss America, Judy Garland, and Venus, and the encounters and loves that have shaped him.^[8] Bright, alone in his New York City room on a hot summer's day, descends gradually into madness as the play progresses.^[9]

Journalist Anne Marie Welsh describes The Madness of Lady Bright as the first contemporary play in which "gay characters were portrayed as humans, not as villains, depressives or deviants".^[1] A similar claim has been made for Doric Wilson's Now She Dances!, an interpretation of Oscar Wilde's Salome, produced three years earlier at the Caffe Cino.^[10][11] Scholars have cited the play as among the works at the beginning of the gay theatre movement in 1960s New York, prior to such works as Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band.^[12] Others have contended that, because it treats the characters' homosexuality as background and context, rather than as integral to the play's plot, The Madness of Lady Bright should not be considered "a gay play".^[13] Critics have noted the themes of isolation and desperation in the play, and report that older female audience members approach Wilson to tell him that they understood the play's theme as "not homosexuality but loneliness."^[14]

Production history

The production opened in May 1964 at Caffe Cino in

The Madness of Lady Bright became Caffe Cino's first popular success, and the first production to be extended and later revived at the theater.[4]^[17] It ran for 205 performances before the Caffe Cino closed, following Cino's suicide, in 1968.^[18]

The American Theater Project toured the show in the United Kingdom during 1966, performing at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill and the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh, directed by Marshall W. Mason and starring Charles Stanley in the title role, cited by the New Statesman as "the finest performance currently to be seen in London."^[19] It was produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club's repertory troupe, alongside Wilson's Home Free!, on tour in London in 1968.^[20] The play has been produced throughout the United States,^[21] in Canada,^[22] and in Singapore.^[23]

In 2014, a 50th-anniversary production was held in Glasgow, Scotland as part of the Glasgay! Festival. The production featured Michael-Alan Read as Leslie Bright, Lynnette Holmes as Girl, and Martin McBride as Boy. The show was co-produced by Glasgow's Cardboard Fox Theatre Company and was praised by reviewers. It was directed by Phil Bartlett and restaged by Helen Cuinn. The production was notable for its simple set design, using only a mattress and sheets on which the names of Leslie's lovers were scrawled.^[24][25]

Reception

As one of the first plays to depict an explicitly gay protagonist, the work was characterized by some as shocking even to the avant-garde, and predominantly gay, audiences at Caffe Cino.