For Sondheim lovers—and like recovering alcoholics, we are legion—Finishing the Hat (Knopf) is far and beyond the most adroit and comprehensive look at the man and his music that has ever been written. Meryle Secrest and Martin Gottfried wrote biographies of Sondheim but both books were badly written and, more importantly, Secrest knew nothing about… read more

Lambda Award Winner Allow me, dear readers (and especially those who are librarians), a moment of confession and contrition. Back in the early 1980s, when I was a young and not-quite-out gay man living and attending high school in the small, overwhelmingly Catholic Cajun town of New Iberia, Louisiana, I depended on the Iberia Parish… read more

As Gay Fate would have it, on two consecutive nights last week, I attended plays about men who have sex with men. I’d call them “gay plays” but since I have no idea whether either of them sleeps with musicals, how would I know? At cursory glance, both would seem to be as dissimilar in… read more

Carolyn Gage’s work as a playwright is unique in its exploration of history, biography, and lesbian reinterpretation. In all her work, protagonists challenge ways in which both ordinary and more famous women have been colonized by male sexual violence, whether physically or mentally; and in negotiating that maze for an often startled audience, Gage’s scripts… read more