Yank!

****1/2
The Gallery Players




Give me a respectful, carefully paced, sensitively acted, gay romance with equal parts of unrequited love, shame and intermittent explosions of passion and you will have me bawling like a melting fagbeast... which is exactly what I was doing at David and Joe Zellnik's Yank!, currently in previews at The Gallery Players in Brooklyn. Led by a stunningly charming Bobby Steggert and swoontastic Maxime de Toledo, we have here a funny and heart-wrenching, old-school style, big musical about seldom explored stories of gays in the military during WW2. Thanks to Igor Goldin's tight, smart direction and a well cast company of actorsoldiers, this is one hell of a good production. Oh yes, and among this sweaty rabble of dogtagged mancastedness is a one Ms. Nancy Anderson, who, as listed in the program, plays "all females" and does so tremendously. She seems to be channeling every diva from Judy Garland to Bernadette Peters. How completely appropriate.