Emotionally Battering Beirut at the Vortex

Given that one of today's hottest Broadway tickets is really a revival—Spring Awakening is based on an 1891 play—perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the Vortex’s revival of Beirut has turned out so well. Written by Alan Bowne during the AIDS crises of the ‘80’s, the play tells of love in the time of a plague far deadlier than AIDS. Set in the near future, Beirut's plague is transmitted by any bodily secretion, so even hugging sweaty flesh can be dangerous. It’s a disease so deadly that those who’ve tested positive are tattooed then quarantined in Manhattan’s lower east side. Sex everywhere outside the quarantine zone is forbidden.

In this production, directed by the Vortex’s Producing Artistic Director Bonnie Cullum, Torch (Matthew Patterson) has been quarantined. His healthy girlfriend Blue (Melissa Vogt-Patterson) breaks into the disease district to see him. She’s even gotten a peel-off sticker of the disease-positive tattoo, so that a guard (Gabriel Maldonado) won’t know she’s healthy. Healthy people aren’t allowed in the quarantine zone.

With Beirut’s ads proclaiming “Nudity. Sexually Explicit Material. Adults Only,” audiences might think they'll be seeing a titillating show. While there is plenty of nudity, it isn’t of the arousing sort. In this hour-long saga of love, lust and sexual deprivation, the actors (and real-life newlyweds) Patterson and Vogt-Patterson go at each other with a clawing intensity and emotional rawness that pulls you into their dark tale of doomed love. The actors are often naked, or nearly naked and intertwined, but we're looking at the dark underbelly of lust, obsession and need. There’s love, but not romance. It probably isn’t a show you’d want to see on a first date. It isn’t suggestive or racy; it’s intellectually challenging. After watching it, we felt battered and worn-out from the trauma of seeing the actors emotionally slugging away at each other.