Bad Gums
Characters
- Randall:
- Adult male, late-thirties/early forties, a wild-haired artist, scruffy and druggy, Mickey's mate.
- Mickey:
- Adult male, mid-to-late thirties, a wild-haired artist, scruffy but with pretensions, Randall’s mate. Randall and Mickey live together and do their art together under the name of Randall-and-Mickey
- Celia:
- Adult female, late thirties/early forties, artist, old friend of Randall's and Mickey's
- Carmen Zapora:
- Adult female, fifty-something, owns a gallery, represents Randall-and-Mickey
- Dr. Sylvia Bloodhorn
- Adult female, head of the Acquisitions Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Setting
All scenes take place in Mickey and Randall's loft—an industrial space, high ceilings, good light, part living space, part studio, a housekeeping disaster, but an artistic one. A kitchen area is stage right. Stairs rise to a sleeping loft on a second level. Dominating the space is a very large canvas, twenty feet long, six to seven feet high, a barn-red field of color. Cans of paint, brushes, and so forth are laid out on work tables.
Production history
- Staged reading, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington D.C., 1999
The Story
Randall and Mickey are artists and lovers. They live together and do their art together. But it's all too intense—living together, working together, lovers and collaborators for almost ten years, suddenly on the brink of success after years of setbacks and struggle. And they can't finish the painting they've been working on, their vacation to Mexico was a disaster, and ever since they returned they've been having the same identical nightmare. Mickey decides he has to move out. End of relationship. End of art.
Meanwhile, Celia, an old friend, has just moved back to town and is staying with them, and Carmen Zapora, the gallery owner who represents Randall-and-Mickey, is working on a deal to sell a "package" of their work to the Whitney. But Carmen is interested in Celia too, artistically and sexually, and just as Mickey's packing his things to move out, he discovers Randall's stash of pornography, unexpectedly heterosexual porn, and expressing his shock he learns that Randall and Celia had had a sexual relationship years ago, and, could it be that something sexual is going on between them again?
This is a play with an absurdist edge, that explores through humor and irony the co-dependent cycle of Randall and Mickey's relationship, the business of making art, the realities of love and long-term relationships, the slipperiness of sexual identity, and the helplessness of being stuck with yourself in the middle of life.