Tony Kushner’s new play, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” is far from perfect, but there’s no denying it can fuel conversations for hours. Which is why trying to give an overview in about 400 words is a fool’s errand — just identifying all the characters, their relationship to each others and their inidividual brands of neurosis would have taken up the entire space I had.
For now I’ll expend on one point I briefly raised in my review. In “Angels in America” and his book for “Caroline, or Change” (to my mind one of the finest musicals of the ’00s), Kushner demonstrated great empathy for all his characters. You could tell he felt for both Harper and Hannah Pitt, Mormon women for whom you may assume he wouldn’t have much sympathy. But in “iHo,” the characters who aren’t devoured to the point of incapacitation by their neuroticism and their intellectualism get short thrift. The lawyer is a boor, the aunt doesn’t say much, V’s straightforward Korean wife is a glorified prop. V himself — the one working-class character in a show preoccupied with class issues — has a big wordy fight with his disapproving father, but he comes across as unsophisticated.
And while we’re at it: The men have plenty of time and plenty of scenes to discuss their problems; the women, not so much (except for Linda Emond’s character, tellingly nicknamed Empty). The gay-male trio processes its issues over and over while the lesbian couple gets a short scene towards the end that feels like an afterthought — they barely speak to each other before that. Plus ça change…