‘Splash of the Titans’

Writer Peter Moore Imagines the Fictional Meeting of Two Real Gay Icons

No one is sure when musical revues first came to be … but that’s okay, because no one is sure what musical revues actually are. The best guesses usually combine a stage, shovels full of comedy, a pail of song, a scoop of vaudeville-esque dance, perhaps … all brought to life by a handful of chameleon-like performers and loosely bound by a tether ball-like theme.

That ambiguity suits Peter Moore just fine. He’s a Minneapolis-based creator whose own career defies easy definition: his redoubtable talents manifest as a playwright, actor, director and even a fight choreographer. His talents’ latest manifestation is “Mrs. Parker, Mr. Porter,” a soon-to-debut musical revue penned by Moore.

Its crafted ambiguity twirls around a hypothetical meeting between two gay icons. One is Dorothy Parker, an early-to-mid-20th-century writer and critic who somehow managed to be simultaneously openly straight and married to a bisexual man while establishing herself through her writing as an ally to the nearly-voiceless queer community. Gay men in the know could safely discover other gay men in the know by asking if the other was a “friend of Dorothy.” (Yes, this Dorothy, not the other one.)

The other gay icon is Cole Porter, the early-to-mid-20th-century songwriter and composer who somehow managed to be simultaneously openly gay and heterosexually married while giving pop culture such vigilante gay anthems as “You’re the Top,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” among many others.

“Mrs. Parker, Mr. Porter” recounts an entirely hypothetical, often-dreamlike rendezvous betwixt the two legends, furthered by careful doses of alternating words and lyrics.

“They were, in a way, misfits,” Peter Moore says of his two revue subjects. “While they were in the middle of things, they were on the edges, as well. That’s why they’re still venerated. They’re two remarkable talents.”

The origin of the revue is remarkable, as well. 

“It actually started when Joe Dowling, who used to run the Guthrie Theater, asked me to write a revue featuring Cole Porter and Dorothy Parker,” Moore remembers, “so I said I would.”

Upon completion, the work was greeted with praise and approval … and a bit of bad news: a different Porter-oriented project had been approved for presentation at the Guthrie, leaving “Mrs. Parker, Mr. Porter” out in the figurative cold … for a while, anyway. 

“It had been kind of languishing in a drawer, and one day I just showed it to a couple of people, and they liked it, so I decided, ‘Let’s do it,’” Moore recalls.

He showed the work around to local troupes, but at first found no takers. 

“I think they were hesitant to do a show that had never been done before,” the writer supposes. 

Eventually, after no small amount of existential ambiguity, the revue found its launching pad.

Stage North, a Minneapolis-based theater company, will debut the revue. According to its mission statement, it “focuses on stories of urban life, bringing live, diverse theater experiences to the community.” Further, the company specializes in “intimate experiences, often focusing on actors with minimal sets.” Therefore, presenting a revue that requires only four singers and two actors is, to paraphrase Mr. Porter, a perfect fit.

Moore received another nod whose absence would have ended the project in its infancy. 

“The Cole Porter Estate was very cooperative,” he asserts. “They even bent some of their rules. They have a rule, for example, that you can’t interrupt the songs with dialogue … but they saw some of the things I was trying to do, and they liked it, so they approved it.”

Of course, Porter’s on-stage presence is only half of the story. 

“With Dorothy Parker, we know all the famous one-liners, but it was fun and interesting to get into her monologues and her essays and her revues of things and her poems,” Moore declares. “For anybody who likes literature, she’s still insightful. And some of the stuff she could get away with!”

The revue’s venue, Open Book in Minneapolis, conveys a literary air that would most likely be approved by the Queen of Snark herself. “Open Book is a community gathering place dedicated to diverse and dynamic creativity, conversation, and collaboration rooted in the literary and book arts,” its website states.

Moore notes that the ambiguities between his two subjects are simultaneously superficial and deep, despite their never meeting. 

“They were contemporaries,” he catalogs. “They lived in the same time — they were part of that glitzy time in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s when they were hobnobbing with very famous people. And they were famous in their own right. It was a unique time. The wit and the talent they both had — they were kind of dazzling.”

Perhaps the most significant, most intriguing, most dazzling ambiguity is the one Moore has left unexplored by “Mrs. Parker, Mr. Porter.” 

“What might have they done today without the societal restrictions that they both had?” Moore muses. “It’s interesting to think about.”

Tickets for “Mrs. Parker, Mr. Porter,” showing Thursdays through Sundays from March 6-29 at Open Book, are available on Eventbrite.