Quintessence Theatre Group Presents James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, adapted by Benjamin Sprunger and Paul Oakley Stovall

Baldwin, celebrated for his works of fiction and essays that asked difficult questions about race, sexuality, and class in the mid-20th century, published Giovanni’s Room in 1956. Baldwin adapted his seminal work of queer fiction into a screenplay that was never produced. Quintessence has exclusive rights to the first stage adaptation authorized by Baldwin’s estate (and only the second approved adaptation in any medium, following the 2018 film If Beale Street Could Talk).

Queer folks in the corners

Set in Paris in the 1950s, Giovanni’s Room portrays the strife of queer people forced to carve space in the corners of society. David, a queer American man in his mid-20s, is burnt out and hiding from himself, his family, and his would-be fiancée, Hella, while spending long nights in gay clubs throughout town. In one such bar, he meets Giovanni, a passionate yet traumatized Italian immigrant tending bar for an unseemly older gay man. David and Giovanni’s spark is instantaneous, quickly engulfing them into an erotic, intimate, troubling affair.

With this relationship, Baldwin portrays an unsettling dichotomy between people of different classes—David is privileged, living on a trust fund, while Giovanni hails from an impoverished Italian village and lives in a tiny, dirty room on the outskirts of town. The work also explores the different cultural values of Americans and Europeans, showing how the American characters are in constant motion between European cities in an effort to “find themselves.”

Perfect dramatic tension

Ethan Check and Michael Aurelio star as David and Giovanni, the tragic lovers at the center of the story. The point-counterpoint of their portrayals creates a perfect dramatic tension that propels the action.

“I can look and sound sober while practically in a state of collapse,” David says to Giovanni in one of their first conversations. Fittingly, Check portrays the young American as placid, almost stoic in his gestures and intonation, but as the drama unfolds, so too does David’s sober artifice. At key moments, Check’s David succumbs to his own turmoil in bursts, an arresting portrayal of a young man in crisis.

Conversely, Aurelio’s Giovanni wears his emotions with grandeur and volume. Giovanni is at once smooth and alluring, as well as desperate, angry, and wild. Aurelio captures the big swings of the Italian’s emotions while keeping the performance grounded and present. In several key scenes, Giovanni’s fury boils to frightening degrees, foreshadowing acts of violence. It is a great credit to the performer that, even at his scariest, Giovanni remains a sympathetic figure.

Humane yet unabashed

In the intimate Sedgwick Theater, Giovanni’s Room invites audiences to eavesdrop on these characters’ lives, akin to sitting in a bar and overhearing something juicy at a neighboring table. Shaun Motley’s static, gray set serves as backdrop for colorful lighting (Levi Wilkins) and subtle projections (Mike Tutaj) that evoke different places in Paris. The evenings in underbelly bars and restaurants are colored coolly, while warmth permeates the daytime locales of polite society. The production makes generous use of haze to evoke the smoky barrooms where the characters become themselves, as well as the ensuing foggy dawns of remorse and confusion.

The adaptation was penned by Benjamin Sprunger and director Paul Oakley Stovall. Speaking with WHYY about early drafts, Sprunger shares that action was a primary concern for the duo as they revised the initially presentational script. They achieved an effective balance between the contemplative pace of fiction and the forward momentum of a stage play.

Quintessence’s Giovanni’s Room is a cohesive, affecting evening of theater that portrays queer strife in a humane yet unabashed way. It is not a story of triumph or hope, but of tragedy: how an entire generation of queer people were made to choose between authenticity and security, truth to themselves versus acceptance from wider society. It speaks both to the political climate of the 1950s, as well as the modern day, as queer people continue to face persecution throughout the world. At the play’s end, we do not receive an answer for the struggle, but we are left understanding in our guts the urgency of the situation.