Pausing on his tour of 1970s America, our narrator reaches the Midwest finance capital and says: “What Chicago has, superlatively, is lifeguards.” Out they come, dancing hunks in yellow shorts. At other points they are bisexual Native Americans or waltzing cowboys, while around them a choir hymns rebels and rent boys, lovers and lechers. Peter Scott-Presland’s take on Edmund White’s States of Desire whistles through the American gay scene in the heady years before Aids. And be warned, it is the “scene” that White and this musical explore: only once, in Memphis, do we meet a settled couple we might grow to like. These days, that feels like a flaw.
And flawed it is, this strange, uneven, not-quite-a-musical (more a semi-staged oratorio). Yet say that