STAGE WEST: "To My Girls" at Diversionary Theatre

Wilfred Paloma (left) and Wil Bethmann in "To My Girls."                                               Xing Photo Studio

            Coursing beneath “To My Girls’” blended margaritas and baring of skin and one wild attempt at a DIY Spice Girls dress-up video is some serious baring of soul. It’s not that playwright JC Lee’s high-spirited gathering of three gay millennials for a Palm Springs getaway isn’t Party Central personified. It is. But like most parties this one doesn’t go exactly as planned.
            Many critics pontificating about Lee’s 2013 play, which is enjoying its San Diego premiere at Diversionary Theatre, have in doing so referenced Mart Crowley’s 1968 drama “The Boys in the Band.” That play also revolved around a party, this one a birthday gathering set on the Upper East Side. While “The Boys in the Band” found its characters practically at odds with their sexuality, those in “To My Girls” are proud of theirs – their noisy conflicts and intense self-examinations stem from their faults and frailties as individuals, not just as gay men. The two-hour play, directed at Diversionary with buoyancy and thought by Jesse Marchese, manages well the balance between the outrageous and the interior.
            What the principals of “To My Girls” contend with is in large part a disconnect between queer generations, the millennial characters confronted by a testy boomer (the man who’s rented them the Palm Springs digs) and by a Gen-Zer brought home from a bar. This coupled with the interpersonal dramas going on makes for a VERY busy script, though except for a closing 15 minutes or so that feels tacked on everything coalesces in a diverting manner.
            The party-giver in Lee’s play is Curtis (Wil Bethmann), an Instagram influencer who loves his “girls,” but indications from the very start are that he loves himself and his impulses even more. The first to arrive at the Palm Springs pad (superlatively conceived by Mathys Herbert right down to the hanging chair, wet bar and artsy portraits of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli)) is Castor (Wilfred Paloma), whose uber-flamboyance hides a vulnerability and no paucity of hurt. Leo (Zack King) is a propounder of inter-relational and social media wisdom and, like Castor, someone of depth and disappointments.
            So you have Curtis (white), Castor (Asian-American) and Leo (Black), bound by friendship and history, sharing their queerness and general age but with very different existential perspectives.
            Bernie (Frank DiPalermo), the owner of the house, reveals himself to be a two-time Trump voter, instantly alienating him from the others, though halfway through “To My Girls” it could be said that everyone’s unreasonable to some extent. It’s less politics and more of that aforementioned generational divide from which the tensions roil.
            Omar (Jocorey Mitchell) is the young man brought to the house by Castor, and besides being the youngest man in the room he’s the most accepting and maybe even the sharpest.
            In between its revelries “To My Girls” caroms through its characters’ confrontations, misunderstandings, accusations, recriminations and reconciliations. The playwright’s conceit is that the party never truly stops and the action is weighted more toward entertainment than preaching.
            Still, the quintessential moment of the play is the recitation of a letter, one written and read in a spotlight by Castor. It’s here that Lee may be saying what he wants to say most of all about gay culture and relationships at their most complex.
            It’s fitting that this is Paloma’s scene, for over the two acts his is the production’s most hilarious and also most tender performance.
            Make no mistake, “To My Girls” is party time … but there’s time made for much more.
            “To My Girls” runs through Dec. 7 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.