Lips Together, Teeth Apart is a 1991 American play written by Terrence McNally. The play which premiered Off-Broadway, concerns two straight couples who spend a weekend in a gay community.
Lips Together, Teeth Apart is a 1991 American play written by Terrence McNally. The play which premiered Off-Broadway, concerns two straight couples who spend a weekend in a gay community.
A gay community in Fire Island provides an unlikely setting for two straight couples spending the Fourth of July weekend in a house inherited by Sally from her brother who died of AIDS. Through monologues unheard by the others, the characters reveal a desperate sense of individual isolation. The only people these four characters find more alien are the unseen gay men partying in the houses on either side of them. "As they divert themselves from their own mortality with food, cocktails, the New York Times crossword puzzle, fireworks, charades, and biting jabs at each other and the boys next door, the two couples find little to celebrate about themselves or their country on its birthday." [1]
The play opened Off-Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the New York City Center Stage 1 on May 28, 1991, and closed on January 5, 1992, after 250 performances. The play transferred to the Lucille Lortel Theatre on January 9, 1992, and closed on June 27, 1992. Directed by John Tillinger, the play was written for the original cast, which featured Christine Baranski (Chloe), Swoosie Kurtz (Sally), Nathan Lane (Sam) and Anthony Heald (John). It was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award as Best Off-Broadway Play, and Baranski won the Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. [2]
A limited revival was scheduled to open on Broadway on April 29, 2010, at the American Airlines Theatre, through June 20, 2010. Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company and directed by Joe Mantello, the revival was to star Megan Mullally, Lili Taylor, David Wilson Barnes, and Patton Oswalt (in his Broadway debut). On March 24, 2010, Mullally left the production two weeks into rehearsals after creative differences with Mantello. The revival was postponed on March 25, 2010, with artistic director Todd Haimes stating that "they could not find a way to maintain the production schedule under these circumstances"; the production was canceled soon afterwards. [3] [4]
Lips Together, Teeth Apart was produced in 1993 by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, Oregon, and also by the OSF in Portland, Oregon. [5]
There was some controversy about the meaning of the title, which was never clearly defined for the public. The phrase is a suggested mantra dentists use to encourage patients who suffer from stress-induced clenching of the teeth and jaws to lessen the harmful effects. However, reviewer Anita Gates in The New York Times wrote that "the theme of the weekend is mortality (the insect-electrocuting device hangs somewhere on the line between metaphor and parallel), as well as isolation and the exhausting but occasionally fulfilling pursuit of happiness." [6]
In a discussion of the play with the original cast, Kurtz said "The play is at least in part about our responsibility... Specifically the responsibility of heterosexuals to reach out to the gay community in this time of AIDS, to not just turn a blind eye to the situation. But more universally, the play is about whether you can just watch somebody in trouble and think there isn't anything you can do. You can at least try." [7]
McNally said that he wrote Lips Together, Teeth Apart for Lane, Heald and Baranski, as well for as Kathy Bates. When Bates was unable to appear in the new play, Kurtz, a newcomer to the McNally repertory, was offered the role. [7]
David Richards, in an article in The New York Times , called the play "fascinating and ultimately quite touching". He noted that the couples were "out of sync with one another", retreating into their own private activities, and were self-absorbed. Further, they are out of place, in a house where one of the characters' (Sally's) brother has died of AIDS. [8]
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
Christine Jane Baranski is an American actress. She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Maryann Thorpe in the sitcom Cybill (1995–1998). Baranski is also known for her roles as Diane Lockhart in the legal drama series The Good Wife (2009–2016) and its spin-off series The Good Fight (2017–2022), and as Agnes van Rhijn in the period drama series The Gilded Age (2022–present), both roles which earned her Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Ethan Phillips is an American actor. He is best known for his television roles as Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager and PR man Pete Downey on Benson.
Joseph Mantello is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen. He first gained prominence for his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Tony Kushner's two-part epic play Angels in America (1993–1994), for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination. He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).
Corpus Christi is a 1998 American play by Terrence McNally, written in 1997 and first staged in New York in 1998, dramatizing the story of Jesus and the Apostles, depicting Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. McNally arranges the narrative through anachronisms that represent Roman occupation.
Love! Valour! Compassion! is a play by Terrence McNally. The play opened Off-Broadway in 1994 and transferred to Broadway in 1995. It won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
Anthony Heald is an American character actor known for portraying Hannibal Lecter's jailer, Dr. Frederick Chilton, in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Red Dragon (2002), and for playing vice principal Scott Guber in David E. Kelley's Boston Public (2000–2004). Heald also had a recurring role as Judge Cooper on Kelley's The Practice and Boston Legal. He had a prominent role as a troubled psychic in The X-Files episode "Closure".
The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer. It focuses on the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group. The play's title comes from W. H. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939".
Sally and Marsha is a comedy-drama, written by Sybille Pearson and directed by Lynne Meadow. It premiered Off-Broadway in 1982.
The House of Blue Leaves is a play by American playwright John Guare which premiered Off-Broadway in 1971, and was revived in 1986, both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, and was again revived on Broadway in 2011. The play won the Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and the Obie Award for Best American Play in 1971. The play is set in 1965, when Pope Paul VI visited New York City.
The Ritz is a comedic farce by Terrence McNally. Rita Moreno won a Tony Award for her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production, which she and many others of the original cast reprised in a 1976 film version directed by Richard Lester.
The Lisbon Traviata is a 1989 American play by Terrence McNally premiered Off-Broadway. It revolves around several opera fans, especially of the opera singer Maria Callas, and their gay relationships.
The Lucille Lortel Theatre is an off-Broadway playhouse at 121 Christopher Street in Manhattan's West Village. It was built in 1926 as a 590-seat movie theater called the New Hudson, later known as Hudson Playhouse. The interior design is largely unchanged, though as of 2024 it has 295 seats.
The Lucille Lortel Awards recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. The Awards are named for Lucille Lortel, an actress and theater producer, and have been awarded since 1986. They are produced by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation, with additional support from the Theatre Development Fund.
Love! Valour! Compassion! is a 1997 drama film directed by Joe Mantello and written by Terrence McNally, adapted from McNally's play of the same name. It revolves around eight gay men who gather for three summer weekends at a lakeside house in Dutchess County, New York, where they relax, reflect, and plan for survival in an era plagued by AIDS.
Everyday Rapture is a musical with a book written by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan and music by various composers. It ran Off-Broadway in 2009 and opened on Broadway in 2010. The musical is a loose autobiography of Scott herself, showing her travels from her half-Mennonite Kansas childhood to a life in show business.
It's Only a Play is a play by Terrence McNally. The play originally opened off-off-Broadway in 1982. It was revived off-Broadway in 1986, and on Broadway in 2014. The plot concerns a party where a producer, playwright, director, actors and their friends eagerly wait for the opening night reviews of their Broadway play.
Michael Louis Chernus is an American actor. He has acted on film, television, and the stage. He is perhaps best known for his role as Cal Chapman on the Netflix original comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019). Chernus played Phineas Mason / Tinkerer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: Homecoming, which was released on July 7, 2017.
Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life is a 2018 documentary film about playwright Terrence McNally. It was directed, produced and written by Jeff Kaufman, and produced by Marcia S. Ross. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2018. It will be distributed by The Orchard in November 2018. An expanded and illustrated version of the script will be published by Smith and Kraus in October 2018. Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life aired June 14, 2019 on PBS’ “American Masters.”
Thomas Joseph Kirdahy is an American Tony and Olivier Award-winning theatrical producer, film producer, lawyer, and activist.