Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (May 16, 2008)

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE!

ON DVD

Raul Esparza in a performance from Company

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

The revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company makes it to DVD next week and features an amazing performance by Cuban-American stage actor Raul Esparza. After twenty years of marriage (to a woman) Esparza recently came out as bisexual. In a New York Times interview he spoke of his struggles with sexual identity, and how his personal experience helped him to connect with the role of "Bobby" in Company:

“I think the real thing that Bobby is going through is that he’s trying to grow up, and that means accepting things you can’t change, and it also means that in spite of all the messiness and failure you make a choice to love someone and live your life in the way that’s right for you. It’s messier than the pretty picture you painted for yourself. I had a romantic idea of what it means to be an adult: all husbands and wives who love each other get to stay together forever, love is enough."

“There’s a song in the show, ‘Sorry/Grateful’: ‘You holding her thinking you’re not alone/And you’re still alone.’ I remember with Michele [Esparza's wife] one day holding her in bed and being very, very sad because we were talking about things that were so difficult for us to deal with. I remember feeling like this was a chasm between us. That the person I most loved in my life was as far away as another country, and there was nothing I could do or say to change.”

Raul Esparza

AT THE MOVIES

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

If you’re like me, you pretty much slept through the The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. About the only two things that perked me up in that film were James McAvoy tricked out as a satyr and Tilda Swinton’s stick-and-twig-braided dreadlocks. (As Christian Siriano would say, "fierce!") Other than that I thought the movie was a major snooze.

So here's hoping this second installment of the C.S. Lewis franchise (directed by Andrew Adamson and produced by out author / film producer Perry Moore) will be more riveting. The big question mark is the lead. They cast little known British actor Ben Barnes in the title role of Prince Caspian. Before this, Barnes was probably best known from the London stage version of The History Boys, where he played "Dakin." Interesting factoid: Barnes seriously peeved the producers of that play by breaking his contract and departing midway through the show's West End run in order to take on the Narnia role.

Ben Barnes as "Prince Caspian"