Some People Call Him Maurice
E.M. Forster’s gay romance Maurice isn’t nearly as well known as his other novels such as A Passage to India, A Room with a View and Howard’s End. Although the book was written in 1914, Forster only allowed it to be published after his death in 1970, as it was far too telling of the author’s own closeted homosexuality. It was also made into a Merchant Ivory film, as all Forster novels must, but not a particularly good one.
I’ll Fly Away
Sleepwalkers Theatre’s entire current season is devoted to 28-year-old playwright J.C. Lee’s This World and After trilogy, which got off to an intriguing start with This World Is Good back in August. The current production, Into the Clear Blue Sky, doesn’t have any of the same characters, but it shares many themes and other elements with the first play. There’s talk of apocalyptic events, which in This World were speculation about the future and in Clear Blue Sky are a vaguely defined status quo—and a completely different doomsday scenario than the one outlined in the previous play in any case. Both plays are very much about the relationship between a brother and a sister, one of whom leaves the other behind in a dramatic fashion, and in both cases there’s a brooding mom who communicates mostly in monologues through letters read aloud (this time it’s not her fault because she’s the one left behind).
