Jerome

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John J. Caswell’s Jerome is a lovely low-key play about a love, loss and illness. However, Dustin Wills who previously directed Caswell’s Wet Brain also at Playwrights Horizons never really lets us know where the play is going and its loose ends tend to get in the way. However, its excellent cast of three, two-time Tony Award winner Stephen Spinella, Jeorge Bennett Watson and Ken Barnett keep us interested in the fate of these three men, one dying of kidney disease and heart issues, while the others try to keep him alive and contented.

The title refers to a ghost town in Arizona abandoned when the mines shut down in 1950. However, it has since 1960 become an artist colony with 500 residents some of whom live in its famous cliff houses on Cleopatra Hill. In the play, the town is as much a metaphor as a real place. People seem to go there to hide out from the rest of the world and its problems. Doane and Con (short for Cornelius) met as soldiers during the Korean War where they knew they were meant for each other. Ten years later they moved to Jerome to be left alone to live in peace.

Now in Fall 1992, 28 years of cohabiting in Jerome and looking ahead to their planned 30th anniversary trip to Italy, Con is ill and their sex life has dwindled to nothing. At the North Arizona Pride Alliance’s 28^th Annual Bloodsucker Ball, Con in a full-body bear costume suggests to Doane (dressed in drag as Nina Simone) that they find a stranger for a third. Con suggests a muscular younger man dressed as a Master of the World but as Con is about to faint, they don’t stick around to meet him.

Ironically, the next morning Bruin, the same younger man, turns up for one of Doane’s town tours and Doane impulsively invites him to dinner. After a night of wild sex with all three of them (which we only hear from the bedroom but do not see), he moves in for the next year as part of a trouple. Reticent about his past life, Bruin is obviously hiding something. But as Con gets worse and he worries that Doane might be left alone, he attempts to find out Bruin’s story. We eventually find out that he is running away from the rampant AIDS in San Francisco but has a more personal reason for having left. Though none of the three main characters have AIDS, Con and Doane are aware of it and each year at the Halloween Ball the names of those who have died of it are read out loud.

The set by director Wills suggests the men are living in a cave house in the cliffs with walls covered by vegetation. We often hear the sound of miners digging (in the sound design of Leah Gelpe) though that has to be a memory of an earlier day. In a nightmare sequence that ends Act I and starts Act II two of the men find themselves in a mine when the floor of their house collapses, though this could be one of many visual metaphors the play is filled with like Con and Doane’s all-year-round Christmas trees and other rituals like fishing on Thanksgiving morning.

The characters are underwritten but the actors fill out their roles nevertheless. Best is Spinella whose role as the acerbic and quick-witted Con may remind you of his star turn as Prior Walter in both parts of Angels in America. Not only is he the glue that keeps all three men together, he is believably able to shift moods on a dime. Watson as Doane gives a solid, stalwart performance though we never learn his backstory. His compassion and caring is both commendable and what most of the play is about. While the handsome Barnett as Bruin tells us little at the beginning though medical alarms and sickness make him sick to his stomach from the beginning, he keeps us wondering until late in the second act when he reveals his story.

Barbara Samuels’ dark lighting suggests a place where little sunlight enters either by choice or architecture. The many casual costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz as time passes are pitch-perfect for this Southwestern milieu. The many needed props have been ably supplied by Matt Carlin. There are not many gay plays about men dying of illnesses other than AIDS nor plays about successful trouple relationships. While Caswell is dealing with unexplored territory in this lovely play, his plot and characterizations could use a bit more filling out.

Jerome (through June 21, 2026)

Playwrights Horizons

Judith O. Rubin Theater, 416  W. 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/production-history/2020s/2526/jerome

Running time: two hours and 35 minutes including one intermission