The 24th Day

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. But if He'd kept it all to Himself, then writers most likely would have fallen from grace. If not for vengeance, some of the finest stories in Western culture would not exist. Since Shakespeare's Hamlet, revenge has been at the forefront of dramatic consideration, and it's certainly an element in countless thrillers, including The 24th Day, the latest offering from Naughty Austin at Arts on Real.

While Naughty Austin, which has brought the capital city such shows as Making Porn and the cross-dressing beauty contest Pageant, may not be known for dramatic fare, this production could change that perception. "Tony Piccirillo wrote it as a play," says Blake Yelavich, Naughty Austin's producing artistic director. "He produced it in San Diego and then made it into an independent film and had great success with it. But he wrote it for the stage, and you can tell. When I saw the movie, I thought, 'Man, this would be a great play.' And the movie ends with 'based on the play by,' and I thought, 'Oh, there's the man to contact.' Tony was thrilled to death that somebody that wasn't him wanted to put it back on stage."

The story centers on Tom, a married man who has unprotected relations with Dan, just once, and subsequently discovers that he has contracted HIV. As in many a thriller, Tom finds this situation unacceptable. The show has all the thriller elements: casual sex, a nice pointy syringe, handcuffs, sudden and sometimes protracted violence with anything at hand used as a weapon. It has some surprises as well, like an unwarranted toilet mishap and discussions of the difference between yellow and maize, the man who discovered the missing link, and how Doc from The Love Boat got so many women. Most importantly, it has a theme that echoes beyond its thriller structure. "It's written smart in lots of ways," says Yelavich. "For instance, the speech that Dan makes about how a hundred thousand people are cheering for a football team, but there's no unity in the message that they want to get across, and just him yelling, 'De-fense, de-fense,' and encouraging unity gives that hundred thousand people a reason to come together. And that's what Tony is trying to do with this story. Can we just have one simple solution that we can get everybody saying at the same time? This is what we need to do to fight HIV right now."

Adding still more spice to the mix, Yelavich has cast four actors, with two each taking on the two roles in the show. "It's a whole lot of beating the shit out of each other for seven weeks, so it's for protection," says Yelavich. "And it keeps it fresh, too.

"What I really loved about this play was that it wasn't the story where the final scene is the son laying in bed and the mother and father coming to terms with his sexuality and his AIDS, and he dies. In this, they learn that there are options, and the first option is to protect each other. It's an HIV story with hope. I didn't expect that at all."