Jeffrey has given up sex.
For a gay man who has had more than 5,000 partners, this is quite an undertaking. Amid the AIDS crisis of the early ‘90s, Jeffrey is consumed by a perpetual fear of the disease.
Jeffrey is the main character in Paul Rudnick’s “Jeffrey,” a play that will be put on by the Florida Players at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts Squitieri Studio Theatre Friday through Sunday. It is free to the public and will have five showings.
The romantic comedy will take the audience through Jeffrey’s troubles as he struggles to give into love and life.
When love finds him in the form of Steve, a gay man who is HIV-positive, he is faced with the decision to capture happiness and enjoy life or let his fear swallow him.
“He takes the audience with him on this journey. You’re inside his brain, and he’s talking to you, and he’s showing you through his eyes what is happening in the world around him,” said Kenny Frechette, a 21-year-old dance senior who plays the title role, Jeffrey. “It’s confetti, glitter, theme shows and cats! It’s a ride.”
Forty-one characters, played by the eight cast members, make up Jeffrey’s outrageous world.
“A lot of the characters I play take place in Jeffrey’s imagination,” said Lindsay Head, a 20-year-old dance junior who plays eight roles. “Each character has to be a little off-kilter, because they are not completely human.”
Head said she had to do a lot of accent work for the play, which is full of “brilliant one-liners.”
Director Sacha Foxx Sorrell, a 22-year-old theatre and telecommunication senior, said the audience can expect a sex game show, an AIDS rodeo and a gay pride parade.
“I think it has a good message of trying to find the humor in everything,” she said. “Even when the circumstances are horrible, there’s always something to laugh about.”
Despite the humor, the play deals with several poignant issues relating to the disease.
The play stresses the hatred for this awful disease that can tear people and relationships apart, but it reminds the audience that people should take advantage of life while they have it, Head said.
“It’s been challenging to understand the beauty between hating AIDS and not hating life,” she said.
Ross Mogerley, a 22-year-old dance junior who plays seven roles, said the larger-than-life characters help to bring humor into the seriousness of the AIDS crisis.
“It felt really relevant to me as a gay artist, being openly gay and proud of my sexuality, too,” he said.
Frechette said he hopes people don’t write off the show because it uses comedy to tell the serious subject of the AIDS epidemic. At its core, it’s a story about love and remembering to enjoy life.
“I relate to the idea of being really young at heart, and really playful, and really happy and really trying to enjoy life while you have it,” Frechette said. “Enjoy it while you’re young. Enjoy it while you’re hot.”
Even if students can’t relate to the AIDS crisis and the horror of the disease, they can relate to Jeffrey, he said. Just like college students may worry about whether they are taking the right path or choosing the major that is right for them, Jeffrey is also confused.
“That’s Jeffrey. He doesn’t know where his life is going, and he doesn’t know what path to take,” Frechette said.
He said he hopes audience members take away the importance of not giving up, despite all the hardships they may be faced with.
“Don’t deny yourself happiness if the opportunity presents itself,” he said. “Life will suck a lot of the time, but, damn it, that’s why you have to go for happiness when it presents itself to you.”
