I would like to salute and thank the Oklahoma City Theatre Company, which is currently producing my play The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. A handful of right-wing fundamentalists have tried to get this production shut down; agitating to put the good people of a theater company out of work strikes me as both un-Christian and un-American.
I can remember exactly where I was when I had the idea for Most Fabulous. I was sitting across from the director Christopher Ashley at the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue, and we were grousing about how fundamentalists liked to oppose anything gay by insisting that “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” I asked Chris, “But what if God had made Adam and Steve?” and we stared at each other and smiled, because we instantly knew that this was an idea for a play. Most Fabulous, over many drafts, became the story of Adam and Steve, the first gay men, and Jane and Mabel, the first lesbians.
The play was first performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where the cast included the glorious Jessica Hecht as Mabel. In one scene, Mabel announces that she’s been personally sent the word of God. When the other characters asked why Mabel was chosen for such a divine opportunity, I looked at Jessica and gave her the line, “Because I have the best hair.”
The play includes a section set on Noah’s Ark, where the wonderful Becky Becker, as Jane, began to flirt with an assortment of animals, including Lisa Kron as Babe, a lustful sow. Lisa is currently enjoying much wildly earned success at the Public Theater, as the bookwriter and lyricist of the superb Fun Home, and as an actress in The Good Person of Szechewan. But if you click on this website’s Plays section and scroll down, you can see what Lisa looks like with an adorable snout; she also got to seduce Mabel by telling her to “Try the other white meat!”
Back then this section also included a pair of rabbits , including the always sublime Peter Bartlett, who sneered at the ark’s racoons, referring to them as “Just moles with eye makeup.” While the rabbits were ultimately eliminated from the script, I will always treasure the image of Peter in drooping ears, madras shorts and a backpack.
When the play opened downtown at the New York Theater Workshop, there were some protestors, and both the theater and I received many identical postcards, from people who had clearly never seen or read the play. The postcards basically said, “God is all-loving and all-forgiving and He wants you to burn in Hell.” I’ve always admired fundamentalists, for their good cheer and venom.
Since then, the play has been performed all over the country, where I think it surprises people. Most Fabulous isn’t an anti-Christian screed, but a comic exploration of faith. With an imperious Pharoah, his boyfriend Brad and a hunky rhinocerous. For various reasons, the Pharoah is nicknamed “The Mouth of the Nile.”
Again, I am deeply grateful to the Oklahoma City Theatre Company, and to all the theaters that have performed The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. And as for those pesky fundamentalists, I agree with Tibby, the goodhearted socialite in Regrets Only, when she says, “You know, I’ve never understood deeply religious people. I mean, I admire them and I think that their faith is so amazing, but they pray and they pray – and they still look like that.”
