Overview
Synopsis
Winner of the 1995 Tony Award for Best Play and hailed by many critics as Terrence McNally’s finest play, Love! Valour! Compassion! centers around eight gay men who gather at the upstate New York home of celebrated dancer and choreographer Gregory Mitchell. Over the course of three holiday weekends, the men confront and analyze their lives, relationships, and friendships in a moving and hilarious exploration into love and loss in 90s America. As infidelity, AIDS, romance, and death infiltrate their friendship group, the men must decide who and what is most important when reality hits home. Set upon a mostly bare stage with the scenery imagined, Love! Valour! Compassion! finely treads the boundary between comedy and tragedy.
Editor’s Note: The play contains adult content and on-stage nudity.
Show Information
- Book
- Terrence McNally
- Category
- Play
- Age Guidance
- Mature Audiences (M)
- Number of Acts
- 3
- First Produced
- 1994
- Genres
- Comedy, Drama
- Settings
- Simple/No Set
- Time & Place
- Dutchess County, Upstate New York, 1990s
- Cast Size
- medium
- Licensor
- Dramatists Play Service
- Ideal For
- All-Male Cast, Diverse Cast, Professional Theatre, Regional Theatre, Mature Audiences, Includes Young Adult, Adult Characters, Medium Cast
Context
Love! Valour! Compassion! first opened Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in October 1994. The then production transferred to Broadway the following February, opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre. It closed in September 1995, after 248 performances and 28 previews. Directed by Joe Mantello, the production starred Nathan Lane, John Glover, Stephen Bogardus, John Benjamin Hickey, Anthony Heald, Justin Kirk, and Randy Becker. It won the 1995 Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the Tony
to read the context for Love! Valour! Compassion! and to unlock other amazing theatre resources!Plot
Act One
It is Memorial Day weekend and a group of friends congregate around a piano at the upstate New York home of Gregory Mitchell. The group includes Gregory’s blind boyfriend, Bobby Brahms, musical-theater fanatic Buzz Hauser, the long-term couple Perry Sellars and Arthur Pape, an English pianist named John Jeckyll, and John’s Puerto Rican boyfriend Ramon Fornos.
Later that night. Bobby comes down to the kitchen for some milk but instead is accosted by Ramon. Ramon seduces Bobby and
to read the plot for Love! Valour! Compassion! and to unlock other amazing theatre resources!Characters
| Name | Part Size | Gender | Vocal Part |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
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|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
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|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
|
|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
|
|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
|
|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
|
|
Lead |
Male |
Non-singer |
|
|
Supporting |
Male |
Non-singer |
Songs
A song with an asterisk (*) before the title indicates a dance number; a character listed in a song with an asterisk (*) by the character's name indicates that the character exclusively serves as a dancer in this song, which is sung by other characters.
Monologues
Scenes
Key Terms
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Videos
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Quizzes
Themes, Symbols & Motifs
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Quote Analysis
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Guide Written By:
Alexandra Appleton
Writer, editor and theatre researcher