Drama queens' sentimental script

Connoisseurs of gay weepies and camp banter ought be amply pleasured by Terrence McNally's melodrama of opera queens and homosexual lovers brought to as sticky an end as any conceived by Verdi or Puccini.

The Lisbon Traviata premiered in New York 18 years ago and this bitter-sweet comedy, which forges such a cliched link between opera, queens and gay tragedy, now seems dated.

The finale, abruptly tumbling into the depths of ludicrousness, demands acting of exceptional power and passion to make it even remotely believable. But Marcus D'Amico plays Stephen, a spurned gay lover, with mild-mannered listlessness as if his heart or any other vital organ were not in it.

McNally, famous for writing books for New York musicals, specialises in creating gay characters whose sexuality is a heavy burden shouldered with bitter wit, sentimentality and camp exuberance. Such personality traits are paraded in an elongated, plot-free first act by David Bamber's Mendy a love-lorn, middle-aged queen with an all-consuming passion for opera in general and Maria Callas in particular, whose portrait hangs in his messy apartment. D'Amico as Mendy's fellow obsessive remains too subdued for conviction in Stephen Henry's under-energised production.

Bamber, however, voice at a volume suitable for open air performance, hands fluttering in gay abandon, performs like a one-man paramedic trying to revive a theatrical casualty. He pulls out all the stops and enthusiastically flashes them before us. Bamber is funny in his extravagant, over-the-top camping. But the action really begins in the second half, when a long-term love affair grinds to a pained, furious halt.

Stephen's boyfriend - Tristan Gemmill's hunky Mike, who lacks the strength to slip into anything more than his underpants - is poised to defect with Paul, a cute, young number (convincing Matthew Thrift). McNally's writing, though not D'Amico's unruffled performance, transmits a sense of Stephen's wily desperation to thwart the intruder. Gemmill's powerful, persuasive performance is only undercut by Stephen's ridiculous transformation into a Callas-like opera heroine. Sentimentality triumphs.

The Lisbon Traviata