Gemini
Gemini (1977), a comedy by Albert Innaurato. [Circle Theatre, 1,778 perf.] Francis Geminiani (Robert Picardo) returns to his South Philadelphia Italian family on a college break from Harvard to celebrate his twenty‐first birthday. He is visited by two WASP college friends, Randy (Reed Birney) and his sister Judith (Carol Potter). She is supposedly Francis's girlfriend, but Fran, uncertain of his own sexual proclivities, finds he is attracted more to Randy. The chaos that results is complicated by Francis's loud, pushy family, the sluttish neighbor Bunny Weinberger (Jessica James), and her fat son Herschel (Jonathan Hadary), who is attracted to Randy as well. The play trafficked in such contemporary concerns as homosexuality and neuroses, and it took a fresh and funny slant and placed its action in a setting, South Philadelphia, usually ignored by New York–centered playwrights. The Circle Repertory Theatre production was quickly transferred to Broadway for a long run. Gemini was successfully revived Off Broadway by the Second Stage in 1999. Albert INNAURATO (b. 1948) is a Philadelphia‐born playwright who first called attention to himself with his one‐act play, The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie (1977), the study of an unloved man who becomes a compulsive eater. Later plays, none running very long, include Ulysses in Traction (1977), Passione (1980), Coming of Age in Soho (1985), and Gus and Al (1989).
