The Richmond Triangle Players thrive in a rapidly changing capital
Their success is typified by sellout performances
“It was always a nice place before,” Phil Crosby says about his native Richmond, “but I think the really sort of Old, Old South is vanishing into history.”
The Virginia capital has changed dramatically in just the last five to 10 years — and Crosby has certainly done his part for the progressive cause. Only five years ago, the LGBT-focused theater company he runs secured its own performance space.
Instead of anti-gay controversy, the Richmond Triangle Players has been greeted with the opposite. “We’ve got a pretty good straight contingent of an audience nowadays,” says Crosby, its managing director. The result is regular sellout performances and repeated extensions of productions, including 2013’s La Cage Aux Folles and last year’s Cabaret. The current 5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche is also selling out. An award winner at the 2012 New York International Fringe Festival, Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood’s interactive comedy is set in the closeted, claustrophobic mid-1950s. As a result, the women in the play self-identify as widows, even though some of them have never married. The audience acts as fellow mid-century quiche-eaters attending this coming-out party and guiding some of its improv-oriented developments.
Now in its 22nd season, RTP often focuses on producing rarely seen works. “The way it’s looking,” Crosby says about plans for next year, “it’s going to be an entire season of shows that have never been done here in Virginia and in most cases in the whole Mid-Atlantic region.” Add to that list the May production and final show this season, Yank! The WWII Musical, focused on the real but rarely told story of the Second World War’s impact in nurturing a sense of gay identity and community. Writer David Zellnick and composer Joseph Zellnick’s Off Broadway musical has yet to be produced in full in D.C. (The Rainbow Theatre Project did offer a concert reading of the show last year.)
“I have to say, with everything moving so fast, I almost expect it everyday,” Crosby concedes, when asked if the company has faced any homophobic backlash. “But so far, so good…. For a lot of people, for young people, we’re just doing cool theater. It isn’t scary.”
5 Lesbians Eating Quiche runs to March 14 at Richmond Triangle Players, 1300 Altamont Ave., in Richmond. Tickets are $28 to $30. Call 804-346-8113 or visit rtriangle.org.
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