Laughing Through the Tears

Allie Bugajski, Allie and the After Party

American Players Theatre Presents CASEY AND DIANA Review - Laughing Through the Tears

TLDR: Taking inspiration from Princess Diana’s visit to The Casey House during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Casey and Diana shows what the other side must have felt like as the house prepared for her visit. Following two roommates and their week leading up to the visit, our emotions swing from laughing out loud one moment to ugly crying the next.

We’re Having Gay Breakfast!

We enter the Touchstone Theatre and two hospital beds sit before us. One side of the room has more personal touches, the other sparse but the bed is made up with crisp hospital sheets. Here, two men find themselves unlikely roommates at The Casey House in the 90s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Casey House opened as a judgement-free, compassionate treatment and hospice care center for those with AIDS to live out the rest of their life with dignity. Enter the current longest resident at the house, Thomas, played by La Shawn Banks. He’s been there so long, he sarcastically jokes he’s always planning on going home the next week.

His new roommate, a young man named Andre played by Jon Meyer, silently curls up in a ball in his bed and takes a while to open up. The two offer us views from different generations - old school gay and the new. One who knows the best parks to go to, was a waiter at a Sunday brunch staple, and has been through it all. The other, barely twenty and has just been kicked out of his parents house. But the entire house alights with hope when the announcement is made that Princess Diana would be visiting in a week.

Visions of Diana visit Thomas as he describes the events of the past week leading up to her visit. He fills the house with optimistic energy and cries that they are all going to make it to her visit. We watch the week pass, day by day in hopes everyone will be there for Diana.