Review by Choice Review
In The Drag (1927), a young man leaves his long-term homosexual lover in favor of a conventional marriage and respectability in the straight world. Both marriage partners are miserable in their unconsummated union, and the jilted lover, desolate over his loss, eventually kills the husband, whose homosexuality is then revealed to his grief-stricken family. The play, however, is described as a "homosexual comedy" because it showcases a drag ball, attended by the husband's homosexual friends. Herein lies the key to West's plays. Plot and character are subordinated to and serve as a showcase for other kinds of entertainments--musical numbers, wisecracks, one-liners, double entendres, sight gags, and scenes of homosexual exhibitionism. These are, at best, minor plays and not very good minor plays. However, their publication is important for the study of censorship, for two of them were taken to court on obscenity charges. In addition, they provide primary documents of the extensive and very visible gay world of the 1920s, described so thoroughly in George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (CH, Nov'94). The editor (Brooklyn College) includes an introduction and legal documents relating to the obscenity trials. Undergraduates through faculty.
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
How many movie buffs know that Mae West was as much a writer as she was a performer--and that she was a soulful woman of originality, courage, and integrity, boldly going against the moral grain of her times by portraying independent, sexually confident women and presenting homosexuals as people worthy of respect? This volume gives a glimpse of the real Mae West by publishing her three radical, melodramatic, but quite hilarious plays for the first time. They were staged between 1926 and 1928, but each production was closed down, leading to West's arrest and several high-profile court appearances, during which she fought obscenity charges with pride and conviction. It is easy to see why these startling plays outraged the authorities but delighted audiences. West uses the peppery argot of her native ground, the streets of Brooklyn and New York, to great effect, while tackling truly hard-hitting themes. In "Sex" a whore falls in love and goes straight; "The Drag" depicts a love triangle involving a homosexual, his naive and miserable heterosexual wife, and a man they both find attractive; and "The Pleasure Man" explores the dire implications of outrageous promiscuity. It's true that West was no angel: she was an artist and a woman of conviction and honor. (Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1997)0415909325Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
