Gay people and good theatre go hand-in-hand, see: ancient Greece and Tennessee Williams. Conversely, good gay-themed theatre can be hard to come by. How many tired ensemble pieces populated with predictable muscle marys, self-important disco queens, wilting PLWAs, stoic bears and bubbly twink ingenues (each grappling with their place in the world) can one art form support?

Enter i google myself, part of this year's FronteraFest Long Fringe performance calendar. Capital T Theatre Co. takes the work of writer Jason Schafer (Queer as Folk, Trick) and works a little of the same magic on theatre
that Brokeback did on film - breathing some life and dimension into queer-ish characters who are too often represented as two dimensional place-holders.

Capital T Theatre Co. presents i google myself
Tonight at 7pm
The Blue Theatre [map]
[tickets]

Bastion Carboni, Jude Hickey and Cliff Miller play three characters who may or may not have the same name, may or may not be gay, and may or may not have the best of intentions. Hickey and Miller's opening scene - an uncomfortable conversation between Hickey's gay porn-star and Miller's recently-divorced nerd journalist - sets the action moving. Before you can say "I'm going to slap your ass so hard it'll see stars," the audience is pulled into the world of three refreshingly weird (gay! not gay!) characters who require some mental chewing - no pre-digested personas here.

For the next 90 minutes, i google myself embraces dichotomy. Carboni's character takes anger management classes, smokes a lot of marijuana and tries to offset his history of bullying with a cautious samaritan's generosity. Miller stalks his gay-porn hero, bashes in a head with a toolbox, and sells his story to the studios from prison. Hickey discusses his motivation and creative goals for sticking it to his on-screen gay-porn partners, but look - he's "not gay."

No Hollywood endings here either, but that's fine by us. Because the (gay! not gay!) characters don't cling to stereotypical personae, their actions don't follow stereotypical lines.

Tonight's final performance at the Blue Theatre (which marked the first run of i google myself outside New York) will be attended by writer Jason Schafer.