Welcome ‘Homesick’ t

by Jim Gladstone

Something remarkable is happening in a tiny former gallery space on 18th Street in the Castro. It’s a play called “A Guide for the Homesick” on which I’m happy to bestow a secondary title: “How The Rhino Got Its Groove Back.”

Playwright Ken Urban’s thorny, engrossing two-hander centers around a one-night encounter in an Amsterdam hotel room between Jeremy (Ian Brady), a disillusioned young Harvard grad who has been working for an NGO in Uganda, and Teddy (Jordan Covington), a stereotype-defying finance bro. Bodies and souls are bared through their brave conversations and edgy flirtations.

The script is provocative but nondidactic, braiding intellectual and emotional appeal with aplomb. And it happens to fit the Rhino’s new permanent home as if it were written for the space (Kudos to producer Joe Tally, director Alan Quismorio and stage manager Isaac Traister for devising a multi-environment set that works so well in this challenging narrow venue). It’s the kind of socially sensitive and smartly sexual work on which Theatre Rhinoceros built its reputation.

Challenging times, and content

Over the past several pandemicpunctuated years, the Rhino – the country’s longest operating queer theater production organization – has been in a state of flux, moving its performances from space to space while wrestling with show cancellations, sudden cast changes and an erratic selection of work that sometimes seemed more focused on spotlighting subsections of the queer community than showcasing the highest quality scripts, not to mention the financial and audiencedevelopment woes that vex all of our non-profit theater companies.

Along with several recently announced staged readings and upcoming new work by the delightful comic monologuist Tina D’Elia, “A Guide for The Homesick” suggests that this old thespian pachyderm has at last regained its footing.

From the multiple resonances of its title to its complex handling of racial and colonial issues without ever using the words “white” or “Black,” to its incorporation of ripped-from-theheadlines topics (Evangelical American entanglements abroad) without centering or sensationalizing them, to its nuanced takes on mental illness and the psychology of repression, “A Guide for the Homesick” gives the Rhino a horn of plenty to work with.

Actors Covington and Brady dig into the material with commitment in a non-stop 90-minute performance that is no doubt both emotionally and physically exhausting (At last Sunday’s matinee curtain call, I saw tears in the eyes of both performers as they squeezed each other’s shoulders in gestures of support). In addition to their primary parts, each plays a second role, which they make clearly distinct: Overall, then, there are six pairs of characters, each whose relationships refract and shed light upon the others.