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Lanford’s The Madness of Lady Bright, 1964, made NEIL FLANAGAN (right) the star actor of Off-Off Broadway, Lanford the star writer, and the Cino the throbbing heart of an unannounced, unplanned, unprecedented theatre movement. The equally revolutionary fact that it was the first conspicuous sympathetic (heroic?) dramatic treatment of a homsoexual–and a raving, effeminate stereotype at that–took second place to the world’s discovery of Lanford’s liquid, lambent, lyrical, lovely lnes, and his deft, playful sense of theatrical magic and manipulation. The play’s power and poetry made it impossible any longer to be casual about “doin’ a play.” There were new stakes of style, status, stunningness, stardom! (Photo: JAMES D. GOSSAGE)

Lanford’s The Madness of Lady Bright, 1964, made NEIL FLANAGAN (right) the star actor of Off-Off Broadway, Lanford the star writer, and the Cino the throbbing heart of an unannounced, unplanned, unprecedented theatre movement. The equally revolutionary fact that it was the first conspicuous sympathetic (heroic?) dramatic treatment of a homsoexual–and a raving, effeminate stereotype at that–took second place to the world’s discovery of Lanford’s liquid, lambent, lyrical, lovely lnes, and his deft, playful sense of theatrical magic and manipulation. The play’s power and poetry made it impossible any longer to be casual about “doin’ a play.” There were new stakes of style, status, stunningness, stardom! (Photo: JAMES D. GOSSAGE)