SFGMC's 'Tales of Our City'

It's just about impossible to upstage the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, but in a recent concert performance of the chorus' "Tales of Our City," the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony and author Armistead Maupin gave it a damned good shot.

The chorus is used to going it alone, but for this concert they shared stage with the orchestra and Maupin to deliver a memorable and moving night of lyrical images of gay life in Baghdad by the Bay.

Maupin introduced the night's third piece, "Michael's Letter to Mama," based on a coming-out letter written by Michael Tolliver, a character in Maupin's signature "Tales of the City" novel, to his mother, an orange grower back in Florida.

Maupin recounted the days in which that letter was written and published. The spectre of Anita Bryant, who had gained fame as a singer and spokesperson for the Florida citrus industry, had risen out of that state to launch a religious crusade against gay rights in California and across the country. Maupin had not yet had his character Tolliver come out to his parents yet, but felt Bryant's real-life campaign deserved a fictional counterpoint. With political activists such as Harvey Milk and Cleve Jones in attendance, Maupin first read the letter before a packed house at the Castro Theater and said it was symbolically his own act of coming out.

With the text beautifully set to music by David Maddux, the chorus and orchestra performed the piece that has as much poignancy and relevancy today as it did four decades ago.

Maupin introduced that piece, as well as selections from the opera "I Am Harvey Milk" after intermission, with monologues that were hysterically funny and mesmerizingly intimate. He talked about the calls from the Associated Press to him when he was a young reporter in the South offering him first a post in Buffalo ("That's no city you ever want to shuffle off to," a friend warned him) and then San Francisco ("You'll love it: there are 50 gay bars in San Francisco," another friend assured him).

He spoke of his early naivet� and the sexual activity that provided so much fodder for his novels. He spoke of Milk not just as an inspirational leader who did the things necessary to change the city and the world, but as a man with a horny proclivity for blow jobs ("These things must be said," Maupin chided the crowd).

Maupin also spoke of the anger and the sadness provoked not just by Milk's assassination and the onset of AIDS, but of the joy and sense of freedom he and so many others discovered on their ventures to and in San Francisco. Those monologues served as the perfect setups for pieces such as the disturbingly haunting "Dance on Your Grave," one of several selections from the NakedMan collection commissioned by the chorus 20 years ago; and the chilling "I Am the Bullet," one of the selection's from Andrew Lippa's "I Am Harvey Milk."

Sandwiched around the celebratory "Friday Night in The Castro," they served as reminders of the sacrifices that have been made to provide a sanctuary in the city for gays and lesbians estranged from their homes. Maupin captures that sense of estrangement and sanctuary when he refers to his birth family as his "biological" family and those he has bonded with here as his "logical" family.

The two musical highlights were the opening number, the world premiere of "Behold, the Gate"; and an orchestra-only performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's "Festive Overture in A Major" to open the second act. "Behold," composed by James Eakin III with lyrics by artistic director Timothy Seelig, was a stunning and powerful introduction for the entire evening, teasing the audience with the emotions it would soon be flexing. It captured the breathless joy and wonder so many of us have had as we have discovered San Francisco and lived our own tales in our city.

"Tales of Our City" was performed by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony April 14-15 at Davies Symphony Hall. For more information about the chorus, visit www.sfgmc.org. For information about the symphony, visit www.bars-sf.org.