The Procedure by Marcus Yi

You have one more chance to see The Procedure: Thursday June 20, 5PM, Gene Frankel Theater, 24 Bond Street, New York City. I suggest you take it. (This play is part of the Planet Connections Theater Festivity.) 

My husband, The Baad Lamb, was actually tearing up at the ending, and I myself got quite caught up in the story which is something that hasn’t happened to me of late in a theater seat.

In The Procedure, an interracial gay couple is faced with a government-mandated microchip implant in order to remain together. Adrian, in his mid-thirties, is a lawyer happily married to Jacob. He is about to become an American citizen in order to remain in the country when he learns that the path to citizenship requires a microchip implant in his eye. He gets pushed and pulled by husband, family, friends and conscience until he finally makes his decision.

The Procedure could have been a tiresome tin-foil hat rant in the wrong hands, but as written by Marcus Yi and directed by Yi and Sonia Nam, it is a fine telling of how every man—gay or straight—has to define what “home” is and how important it is get one’s personal priorities in order and then to act accordingly. Adrian’s dilemma will make you wonder just what you could or could not live without. If you had to choose between a husband you loved, a job you loved, a principle you believed in or a place you loved, how would you attempt to “have it all?” And if you couldn’t have it all, what would you relinquish?

The fact that the central couple is gay is incidental, and isn’t it nice that we are finally living in a time and place where the gay aspects of a play are not distractions?

Stephen Thornton is entirely convincing as Adrian. Fenny Novyane is a delight as Valerie and she delivers the strongest performance. There were only a couple of weak moments: some trite humor in the commercial interludes and a painfully unfunny scene with Adrian and a doctor that stood out like a sore thumb.

The Procedure is a production of Living Room Theater which was created to produce works made in the living room of Marcus Yi. I hope he will continue to write plays.

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by going to https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/921718 or www.planetconnections.org/the-procedure