If Gemini as written attempted something subtle in bridging high comedy and low, Broadway in the era of Annie and I Love My Wife wasn't having any of that. "In 1977 and 1978, the only way to play it was to play it as a cartoon," Innaurato recalls. "A lot of it was about the bad language, the outrageousness of it. There are people like this all around you, but society didn't allow entertainment to acknowledge that. It's much more realistic now."

Brokaw didn't see the original production (or the TV ads, for that matter) but has been directing scenes from the sections-with-heart in acting classes for the past twelve years. "I always loved the people in it," he says. "It's about a real collection of misfits who find acceptance in the most unexpected place." In a post-ethnic world, do Italians and Wasps still count as misfits? "They still are strangers in a strange land in the world of the play," says Brokaw. "That still holds true."

Two years ago, Innaurato's play about an obsessed actress, Dreading Thekla, was produced at the Williamstown Theater Festival. He couldn't get a New York company interested, not even in a workshop, and he gave up, yet again, on the theater. With Gemini, however, Brokaw invited Innaurato to the rehearsals, and Innaurato sent Brokaw to his Philadelphia neighborhood to get a feel for the setting. That give-and-take (here's when you should mist up) inspired Innaurato to write again. "Playwriting's about being there, about being in touch," he says. "If you get isolated -- novelists have to be isolated or they won't get their pages done every day unless you're in your cabin in Montana without water, that's when you do it -- but when you're a playwright it's all about the chemistry and the people and the excitement.

"There are two actors in Gemini that triggered something in me," he continues, "and I had this idea and I thought, No, I don't want to have my heart broken again. I can't do it again. Then I started just writing." The new play is called Life After Sex. He won't say much more about it than that "it's an Albert play.

"It's very crazy, out there, sexually deranged," he adds.
"You know."

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by Alexandra Lange
• Table of Contents: Jun 21, 1999 issue of New York | Subscribe!