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Reprising Max

Gay actor Ed Dixon draws raves for ‘Sunset’ performance

Published

14 years ago

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Actor Ed Dixon as Max in Signature Theatre’s current production ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ (Production photo by Chris Mueller, courtesy of Signature)

Ed Dixon’s emotional pendulum — as one might expect from an actor —  swings wide.

During an hour-long interview in the lobby of Signature Theatre where he’s on the boards each night as Max in “Sunset Boulevard,” Dixon laughs uproariously and heartily several times recanting tales and dropping names from his four-decade career. And though no tears appear, two of the stories he tells involve copious sheddings thereof.

One even came during “Sunset,” though it was during his initial encounter with the musical 14 years ago when he toured with it for a year with Linda Balgord as Norma.

“In the movie it cuts away from (Max) all the time, but on the stage he’s up there a lot of time in the background just suffering,” Dixon says. “At the end of act one there was a part where I stand behind a fringe curtain at the part where Norma pulls Joe down on top of her and I would just release the curtain down on my face. Well after standing there for six months or whatever it was in that condition, feeling this wretched, painful condition, it’s like your body doesn’t know you’re only kidding. It’s like you’re really experiencing that. This one night I just started crying and cried all during intermission. People were going, ‘Are you OK? I was like, ‘Uhh, not really.’ It had really built up over the run. So how do you deal with that every day for a year? It makes you kind of crazy.”

This production, which runs through Feb. 13 and has been the second-biggest hit in Signature’s 21-year history (after “Les Miserables”), hasn’t been as emotionally draining, Dixon says. But it has been taxing. Returning to the role has been rewarding and challenging, he says.

The lessons Dixon, 62, uses to coach actors and singers for auditions in New York, where he lives on the Upper West Side, have come in handy.

“It feels different doing eight shows a week than it did 14 years ago. I was really vocally stronger 14 years ago but I’ve also been very pleased to see how much agility I still have. … I went into daily training months ago.”

It’s the most vocally challenging part Dixon — who has extensive opera and musical theater credits — has done in years.

Dixon in the Signature lobby. (Blade photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)

The Anadarko, Okla., native and son of a Church of Christ revival minister, knew early on he liked boys, even before he had the language to articulate it. Asked at church as a pre-schooler whom he would someday marry, he matter-of-factly answered Jimmy DeLong, a boy from his neighborhood.

“They said, ‘You can’t marry a boy.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ I remember that, but I didn’t know that I was gay. I just knew I liked Jimmy DeLong.”

Later, he had no idea what taunts (“Hey, queer ass!”) in middle school meant.

He arrived in New York (“Oklahoma is a wretched place,” he says) in the late ’60s and never looked back. Never even to visit his parents, from whom he was estranged and only saw twice in adulthood.

His big break came in the chorus of “No No Nannette,” a popular musical revival in 1970. Even though New York, and especially the theater world, was filled with gays at the time, it wasn’t an especially gay-friendly environment.

“Things were so different then you can’t even imagine it,” he says. “Even in the theater, you didn’t really talk overtly about it. And I was even more behind the times because I was coming from the Dark Ages. I remember in the dressing room of ‘No, No Nannette,’ there was an old queen who only spoke to us in the voice of Bette Davis and used to scare the fuck out of me. I was just like, ‘Oh god, please don’t let me end up like that, you know?’”

Even as recent as his first run with the touring version of “Sunset,” a role he’d eyed since it debuted in London in 1993, there were hints of homophobia in the casting process for the straight part. He knew everyone in the room and was chatting them up between readings. Before the callback, he was tipped off to tone it down.

“I’d had a big career by then,” he says. “One night at a party one of them pulled me aside and said, ‘They really want to know that you were married to her.’ I thought, ‘Are you kidding?’ I’d just been laughing and joking and being myself, you know, before and after I read. So I stayed Max through the whole callback and got it.”

This run, Dixon says, has been draining but creatively satisfying. He and co-star Florence Lacey have worked together several times before and enjoy a special camaraderie.

“We’re like an old married couple,” he says. “You know, I always go spend time with her in her dressing room before the show. She always tells me she loves me. She calls me Daddy and I call her Baby. It’s really sweet. She’s just one of those people who’s so sweet you think, ‘Is that real?” And with her it’s totally real.”

The feelings are mutual.

“Speaking about Ed Dixon, I’m always a gushing mess,” Lacey says. “Ed is a man of extraordinary talent with a big voice and a heart to match. He has a laugh that makes the whole world join in and he can break your heart with a look. He’s tough and sensitive both as an artist and in his friendships. I feel proud to call him my dear, dear friend.”

He’s worked non-stop since he came to New York except for a stint in rehab in the ’80s when he beat a cocaine addiction. Dixon just celebrated 20 years of sobriety.

After “Sunset” ends its run, Dixon will tour with the musical “Curtains.” And a comedy he wrote called “Scenery,” which explores the inside tract of a showbiz Lunt/Fontanne-esque couple in which the husband is gay, is getting rave reviews in Cleveland where it just opened.

Dixon says a life-defining moment came watching his mentor, the character actor George Rose, from whom he learned much about acting and life.

“He was middle aged, this gay, effete, Englishman, and he came into the room and he was just the most powerful man I had ever been in the presence of. That was a big moment for me. Because of him I realized, ‘Oh, you can be gay and still powerful.’ I didn’t know that before.”

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Theater

Theatre Prometheus spreads queer joy with ‘Galatea’

Two girls dressed as boys who find love despite the odds

Published

2 days ago

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May 1, 2025

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Cate Ginsberg as Phillida and Amber Patrice Coleman as Galatea (Photo by Charlotte Hayes)

‘Galatea’
Through May 10
Theatre Prometheus
Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center
7995 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, Md.
$27
Theatreprometheus.org

In a timely move, Theatre Prometheus thought it would be a beneficial thing to spread a little queer joy. And since the company’s mission includes engaging audiences and artists in queer and feminist art, there was nothing to stop them. 

Co-artistic directors Tracey Erbacher and Lauren Patton Villegas, both queer, agree they’ve found that joy in John Lyly’s “Galatea,” an Elizabethan-era comedy about Galatea and Phillida, two girls dressed as boys who find love despite some rather slim odds.  

Now playing at Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center on the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus, the upbeat offering is a mix of contemporary and period, and strives to make audiences happy. Galatea’s cast includes Amber Coleman and Cate Ginsberg as the besotted pair. 

Erbacher, also the production’s director, adds “queer joy is something that I prioritized in casting actors and interviewing production people. I asked them what it means to them, and resoundingly the reply — from both them and the play — is that queer joy is the freedom to be yourself without having to think about it.

“Galatea” was first brought to Prometheus’s attention by Caitlin Partridge, the company’s literary director. Erbacher recalls, “she strongly suggested I read this very queer play. I read it and fell absolutely in love. And because it’s a comedy — I really like directing comedy — I knew that I could lean into that while not neglecting its universal themes of young love.” 

Villegas, who’s not ordinarily drawn to the classics, was also instantly smitten with Galatea.

“Usually with classics, the language doesn’t jump out at me the way modern works do,” she says. “But not so with ‘Galatea.’ The first time I heard it read aloud, I found it easy to follow and entirely accessible in the best way.”

Whether Lyly deliberately wrote a queer play isn’t known. What’s definitely known is the play was written with an all-boy performing troupe in mind; that’s partly why there are so many young female roles, the parts 10-year-old boys were playing at the time. 

There’s not a lot known about Lyly’s personal life, mostly because he wasn’t wildly famous. What’s known about the times is that there wasn’t a concept of “gay,” but there were sodomy laws regarding homosexual activity in England geared toward men having sex with men; it was all very phallocentric, Erbacher says.

She categorically adds, “Women’s sexuality wasn’t considered in the equation. In fact, it was often asked whether women were even capable of having sex with other women. It just was not part of the conversation. If there wasn’t a dick involved it didn’t count.

“Perhaps that’s how the playwright got around it. If there were two male characters in the play he could not have done it.”

Prometheus has done adaptations of ancient myths and some classics, but in this case it’s very faithful to the original text. Other than some cuts winnowing the work down to 90 minutes, “Galatea” is pretty much exactly as Lyly wrote it. 

And that includes, “girls dressed as boys who fall in love thinking girls are boys,” says Erbacher. “And then they start to clock things: ‘I think he is as I am.’ And then they don’t care if the object of their affection is a boy or a girl, the quintessential bisexual iconic line.” 

And without spoiling a thing, the director teases, “the ending is even queerer than the rest of the play.”

Erbacher and Villegas have worked together since Prometheus’s inception 11 years ago. More recently, they became co-artistic directors, splitting the work in myriad ways. It’s a good fit: They share values but not identical artistic sensibilities allow them to exchange objective feedback.

In past seasons, the collaborative pair have produced an all-women production of “Macbeth” and a queered take on [gay] “Cymbeline,” recreating it as a lesbian love story. And when roles aren’t specifically defined male or female, they take the best actor for the part.  

With Galatea, Prometheus lightens the current mood. Erbacher says, “the hard stuff is important but exhausting. We deserve a queer rom-com, a romantic sweeping story that’s not focused on how hard it is to be queer, but rather the joy of it.”

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Theater

Timely comedy ‘Fake It’ focuses on Native American themes

Arena Stage production features two out actors

Published

1 week ago

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April 25, 2025

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Eric Stanton Betts (standing) and Brandon Delsid in ‘Fake It Until You Make It.’ (Photo by Daniel Rader)

‘Fake It Until You Make It’
Through May 4
Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $59
Arenastage.org

A farce requires teamwork. And Larissa FastHorse’s “Fake It Until You Make It” now at Arena Stage is no exception. 

The timely comedy focuses on Native American nonprofits fractiously housed in a shared space. Friction rises when rivals River (Amy Brenneman), a white woman operating in the Indigenous world, goes up against the more authentic Wynona (Shyla Lefner) to win a lucrative Native-funded grant.   

While Brenneman (best known for TV’s Judging Amy) is undeniably a big draw, it takes a group collaboration to hit marks, land jokes, and pull off the well-executed physical comedy including all those carefully timed door slams.

As members of the six-person “Fake It” cast, Brandon Delsid and Eric Stanton Betts, both out actors of partly indigenous ancestry, contribute to the mayhem. Respectively, Delsid and Betts play Krys and Mark, a pair of two-spirited Native Americans who meet farcically cute and enjoy one of the play’s more satisfying arcs. 

For Krys, every attractive man is a potential next fling, but when Mark, handsome and relatively reserved, arrives on the scene, it’s something entirely different. 

Both onstage and sometimes off, Betts plays the straight man to Delsid’s waggishness. But when it comes down to real life business, the friends are on the same page: not only are the L.A.-based, up-and-coming actors intensely serious about their film and stage careers, but they’re also particularly engaged in the themes of Indigenous People found in “Fake It.” 

On a recent Wednesday following a matinee and an audience talkback, they were ready for a phone interview. 

In establishing whose voice was whose, Delsid clarified with “I’m the one who sounds a little like a Valley girl.” 

WASHINGTON BLADE: Brandon, you’ve been with the show since its early work-shopping days in 2022 and through its debut in Los Angeles and now Washington. Have things evolved? 

BRANDON DELSID: Definitely. I’ve grown up in the last couple of years and so has my character; it’s hard to know where I end and Kry begins. There’s been a real melding.

Eric and I are both queer, and to get to play these roles that are so human, imperfect, sexy, and interesting is really joyful.

As queer artists you don’t always get the chance to do work like this. So many stories are queer trauma, which is incredibly important, but it’s liberating to feel joy and ride it off into the sunset, which, without revealing too much, is kind of what we get to do.

BLADE: There’s some race shifting in “Fake It” particularly with regard to “pretendian” (a pejorative term describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous status). 

ERIC STANTON BETTS:  The last few years I’ve been on a journey with my cultural identity and place in the world. I’m a mixed BIPOC artist, my dad is Black and Native American by way of the Cherokee tribe and my mom is white. 

Since 2020, I’ve tried to figure out where I belong in this cultural history that I haven’t had a tie to throughout my life; it’s gratifying to find my way back to my indigeneity and be welcomed. 

In the play, race shifting is introduced through farce. But it’s never in a disrespectful way; it’s never mocked or done in a way to take away from others. The playwright parallels race shifting with gender fluidity. 

DELSID: But in life, there are people posing as Indigenous, actively taking grants, and the play goes there, we don’t hold back. Larissa, our playwright, has made it clear that she’s not trying to figure it out for us. With that in mind, we hope people leave the theater interested and curious to learn more. 

BLADE: Mark arrives kind of the middle of some crazy drama, bringing along a jolt of romance. 

BETTS:  Yeah, when I show up, we’re all sort of shot out of a cannon, struggling to keep up with the initial lie. 

DESLID: A very gay cannon. 

BLADE: What’s up next for you two?

BETTS: Both Brandon and I are up for the same part in a TV pilot, so one of us may be getting some very good news. I also have a Tyler Perry film coming out soon [he plays a model, not an unfamiliar gig for Betts]. 

DELSID: Coming up, I have a recurring part on HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” and a supporting part in “June and John,” a John Besson film. But doing “Fake It Until You Make It” in L.A. and now D.C. has been a special time in our lives. It’s 23/7 togetherness. There’s that hour for sleep. 

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Theater

‘Bad Books’ a timely look at censorship in local library

Influencer vs. conservative parent in Round House production

Published

2 weeks ago

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April 20, 2025

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Holly Twyford (The Mother) and Kate Eastwood Norris (The Librarian) in ‘Bad Books’ at Round House Theatre. (Photo by Margot Schulman)

‘Bad Books’
Through May 4
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda, Md.
Tickets start at $43
Roundhousetheatre.org

While a library might seem an unlikely place for a heated contretemps, it’s exactly the spot where adults go when they’re itching to battle out what books minors might be allowed to read. 

In Sharyn Rothstein’s “Bad Books,” two women, The Mother (out actor Holly Twyford) and The Librarian (Kate Eastwood Norris), swiftly become mired in a quarrel that comes with some weighty repercussions. 

The Mother is a popular conservative influencer on a mission. She’s furious that the local library has overstepped its bounds and she blames The Librarian, a woman who adheres to the “it takes a village” method of child rearing and is dedicated to the young people who approach her reference desk. 

There’s some background. It seems The Librarian who dresses young (tight jackets and Doc Martens) and curses a blue streak, forged a friendship with Jeremy, a teenage library regular. 

While the details are a bit hazy, it seems the troubled Jeremy confided in The Librarian regarding some personal issues. In return, she suggested a helpful book – Boob Juice.

Unsurprisingly, based solely on its title, the book has thrown The Mother into a pique of outrage. After finding Boob Juice in her son’s bedroom, she made a beeline to the library; and not incidentally, The Mother hasn’t read the recommended work and has no plans to do so. 

Set in a suburb with lax gun laws, the story explores facets of division and conciliation. The Mother insists she isn’t so much about banning books as she is keeping some books away from young people until they’ve obtained parental approval. 

“Bad Books” is performed in the round. Built on a rotating stage, Meghan Raham’s set is simple, pleasingly serviceable, and easily transforms from the library into a small corporate office, and later the assembly room of a church. Overhead floats a circular glass shelf filled with a cache of banned books. Things like a rolling book cart and a goldfish bowl add some flavor to the different locations. 

The Mother wasn’t always a popular conservative warrior with an enthusiastic horde of followers. 

Her past includes penning a book that later filled her with guilt and regret. She refers to that early questionable literary accomplishment as her bad book. And while over the years, she has persevered to find and destroy each and every printed copy, she hasn’t entirely succeeded.  

Norris plays three women who figure meaningfully into the arc of Twyford’s mother character. In addition to The Librarian, Norris is The Manager, a broadly played piece of comic relief, and The Editor, a warm woman who reveals things about Jeremy that his own mother never knew. 

Smartly staged by Ryan Rilette, the production is part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. While Rothstein’s script offers two strong roles (skillfully performed by celebrated actors Twyford and Norris), its ending feels too neatly resolved.  

In the past, Twyford and Norris have successfully joined forces for numerous DMV productions including Studio Theatre’s production of David Auburn’s two-hander “Summer, 1976,” the story of a longtime and unlikely friendship between two women who meet as young mothers during the Bicentennial summer. 

Though different, both The Librarian and The Mother share a strong and ultimately hopeful relationship with words.   

There’s a quote from E.B. White’s classic “Charlotte’s Web” that pops up a couple of times in the briskly paced 80-minute play. Charlotte, the wise spider, says, “with just the right words you can change the world.”

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