Today is Saturday, January 25, 2025. It’s getting late here so I’ll just write about the fascinating day that I had with my Astoria friend “Seth” that began at 11 a.m. We first had breakfast at the Bel Aire Diner, located near Seth’s house, on 21st Street. This was one diner I actually never dined in before, so I was quite happy.

The play began at 3, so we had enough time to have breakfast and for us to take the subway down to 14th Street since the theater, the DR2 Theatre, was located on 15th Street. This was a four-character play, as the same two performers played two more characters to round out the play. The actors, McKinley Belcher III and Uly Schlesinger, portray Teddy and Jeremy, two strangers who meet at a bar in a hotel in Amsterdam. The story starts harmlessly enough as Teddy invites Jeremy back to his room near the Amsterdam Airport. The two-hander is set in January 2011.

Harvard grad Jeremy (Schlesinger) has been in Uganda working for the past year as a medical assistant and now he’s supposedly headed home to Boston. That’s when he misses his flight and meets Teddy, a finance guy, who had been with another friend, Ed, who was about to get married but somehow storms out of the same room earlier. This is his straight travel buddy who has a psychotic break before darting out of the room.

The set features a bed in the middle of the room which becomes central to the action in this 85-minute tense drama. You see, Teddy eventually does make a play for Jeremy who freaks out – at least at first. Jeremy’s intense reaction to Teddy’s pass serves as a catalyst for the two men to interrogate each other about their sexualities, and as they explore their pasts, to discover what they’ve both done recently that might have led each other to cause the death of a friend.

In this modern retelling of Sartre’s No Exit, where both men are unable or afraid to leave the room until their secrets are revealed in the 85-minute production, written by Ken Urban, the play explores the guilt, selfishness, and self-deceit plaguing the two Americans as they grapple with the possibility that their questionable behavior may actually be drawing them closer together.

As the play proceeds, we’re introduced to the other two characters: Ed and Nicholas. Nicholas is Jeremy’s gay friend in Uganda who frequented the medical clinic where Jeremy was working. He reveals his love for a married man, Martin, and the two form a close friendship that is marred by the country’s growing homophobia and bans against the “sin.” Belcher portrays Nicholas as a soft-spoken, naive man who isn’t aware of the eventual harm that will befall him as tensions flare up against homosexuals in his country. Schlesinger portrays Teddy’s manic friend, Ed, whom Teddy reveals his feelings for him right before his marriage to Margo. All throughout the production, Teddy’s phone rings and he’s afraid to take the call because of what he might hear.

As the play proceeds, the atmosphere becomes supercharged, with jarring changes in lighting that quickly shift scenes from Amsterdam to Uganda and from present to the past, as the mystery about the men’s pasts and the fates of their friends come into focus.

At the beginning of this shift, I was thrown for a little while as the two actors adopted different accents and dialogue. Then I understood that they were playing different characters in their lives. Reading a review of the play, I learned that Uganda has long suffered from entrenched homophobia, and that as recently as this past April, its courts have reaffirmed the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which puts the lives of LGBTQ+ people in mortal peril. I loved this ending quote from Pete Hempstead’s review of the play from December 12, 2024 in which he concludes, “It is a horrific thread [Uganda’s condemnation of homosexuality] to weave through a story of two men who come from a country that, supposedly, no longer punishes people for loving whomever they want to love. But then again, it doesn’t have to when it encourages us to punish ourselves.” As in Jeremy’s fear of identifying as homosexual as the phantom of his dead friend Nicholas haunts him even as far away as Amsterdam.

It goes without saying that Seth and I both enjoyed the play. I’m not sure when the play’s run is over, but if this synopsis of it appeals to you, then by all means, get tickets for it before it does close. I just looked it up: the play now ends on February 2, which is not too far off in the future.

After the play, we took the subway (No. 7) to Hudson Yards, which is an indoor upscale shopping mall on 33rd Street and 10th Avenue. It’s near the strange-looking structure called the Vessel which had been closed recently because of several suicides there. To me, it definitely looks like the carapace of some crustacean.

Seth wanted to browse inside Neiman Marcus, but when we entered the mall, we couldn’t find the store. We concluded that it must have closed, probably during COVID-19. Instead, we sat down to have coffee upstairs in the food court.

After this, it was time to ride back to Queens. I got off at Court Square to take the E, which exasperatedly, was not running. Thus I had to walk back to the 7 to take it to 74th Street where I then changed for the E train to Forest Hills.

Anyway, that’s the day.

Have a good Sunday. Tomorrow the weather is expected to be practically balmy, with temps to be in the high 30s, close to 40 degrees. Take out the bathing suits, folks.

And so it went!

This is the playbill from today’s play.