Sons of Hollywood by Barry Ball and Carl Menninger, now receiving its world premiere at Windy City Playhouse, is both a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood and an homage to its victims, who survived beyond the ends of their careers, but not without scars. It is also, specifically, about gay Hollywood. More specifically, it is about two gay Hollywood icons, Ramon Navarro and Billy Haines, who rose to the pinnacle of Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s, only to fall to relative obscurity as the Hayes Code reached into the private lives of actors as well as the characters they portrayed. To show how much the Hayes Code affected Hollywood, the new play begins with an earlier Hollywood revolution, talkies, which claimed their share of glamorous matinee idols who could not adapt to sound, and the Hayes Codes, which claimed the careers of more stars who refused to conform to its reactionary idea of morality. The stars at the center of Sons of Hollywood (two sons and a daughter), survive and thrive in the advent of talkies, but struggle to forge careers and lives after the Hayes Code. Spanning four decades, full of period slang and name-dropping, peppered with quotations from the people portrayed, and bolstered by songs that defined the decades and setting, Sons of Hollywood is a zippy tribute that does not have time to delve deeply into the lives of its protagonists, but does give a compelling and entertaining glimpse behind the silver screen.

Though Sons of Hollywood is about the sons of Hollywood, the heart of the play is the decades-long friendship between Ramon Navarro, Billy Haines and Lucille LeSueur, who would achieve fame as Joan Crawford. The three actors who play these roles do a remarkable job of inhabiting them, both physically and emotionally, while growing from relatively innocent Hollywood newcomers, to savvy players, to mature relics of the Golden Age. Haines and LeSueur proved more adept at reinvention, though not without their own trials (though Ball and Menninger’s play wisely eschew delving into Crawford’s Mommy Dearest period and keep the focus on Haines and Navarro), while Navarro became tragically stuck in his past. As Navarro, Trey DeLuna captures the complexity of his character: his blend of self-loathing religiosity and confident embrace of his identity, as well as his increasing desperation. Abby Lee is a glamorous yet unrelenting Lucille, not only doing what she needs to do to advance in her career(s) and marriages, but also steadfast in her support of Navarro and Haines. Adam Jennings brings matinee-idol looks and swagger to the role of Haines, who defied convention and the Hayes code—refusing to enter into a sham marriage with a woman for the sake of his career, then built a flourishing career as an interior decorator. Kyle Patrick brings a charming vulnerability to his role as Jimmie Shields, Billy’s “husband” before this could be legally recognized; in an unconventional yet enduring relationship, Patrick and Jennings capture the loving bond that outlasted tests both internal and external. Acting as Greek chorus, both sung and spoken, the versatile ensemble of Adriel Irizarry, Ben Dow, Jonathan Connolly (whose voice is well-suited to the standards and pseudo-standards he sings), and Max Stewart easily move between roles including lovers, singers, studio executives, publicists and singers. While the quick cuts between scenes do not allow for their roles to have much of an arc, the members of the ensemble create distinctive characters that leave an impression on the audience as they do on the principal characters.

Director David H. Bell emulates the style of early 30’s talkies, in keeping with the quick cuts between scenes. The dialogue, especially in the first act, is effervescent and light (though it could use a little more zing in the pacing). When the play takes a dark turn in the second act, Bell effectively shifts gears, though the switch is abrupt. On Lauren Nigri’s versatile sound stage set, the audience has front row seats (even the most distant “House” seats give an intimate view, while the “Top Shelf” seats are sometimes uncomfortably close to the action) as its members are transported into living rooms, brothels, dressing rooms, sets, and pool-side. Helping make these transitions, providing the right palette and warmth, and guiding the audience’s gaze to the right balcony, stairwell, parapet, and room is lighting designer Anthony Forchielli’s well-executed task, while sound designer Willow James provides a wide-ranging sonic backdrop. Costume designer Sydney Moore perfectly captures the looks of the periods portrayed, as well as the economic shifts in the character’s fortunes from striving to flourishing to worn. Foiles grounds the scenes in the period, deploying phones, cameras and other artifacts and textures of the past in the props design and set dressing. Violence and intimacy designer Max Fabian brings a sense of ease to the intimacy  between actors (important when within a foot or two of the audience), as well as a realistic brutality to the violence, at times by shifting the pacing. Finally, music director Shraman Ghosh does an excellent job of blending recorded orchestrations with live vocals (and of working with the excellent vocalists in the cast).

Sons of Hollywood has some identity crises to work through before it is entirely successful. It has yet to find the right balance between the glib Hollywood gossip-page homage, which seems to project the lives of its real characters onto a silver screen version of themselves, and the more documentary style that delves more deeply into the wrenching emotional consequences of Hollywood’s (and America’s) gender politics. Sometimes the style puts the story at a distance, making it hard to connect to what is truly at stake. It also needs to figure out its musical backdrop. For now, the most successful songs are those that are part of the fabric of the play—the period songs sung in a male brothel and Navarro’s post-screen musical career (though these songs are not nearly as entertaining as some of the others). Some of the introductory songs provide an entertaining counterpoint to the scenes they present, but too many others distract from the emotional connections of the story. Despite these tonal inconsistencies, Sons of Hollywood will appeal to those who are familiar with the Golden Age of Hollywood, whether they know the backstage stories or not. The cast perfectly captures the characters they inhabit, and playwrights Barry Ball and Carl Menninger offer a well-researched glimpse into gay Hollywood and some of its more famous personalities. Adam Jennings as Billy Haines and Trey DeLuna as Ramon Navarro not only look remarkably like their famous characters, but bring emotional depth and intelligence to their portrayals, backed up by an ensemble that is able to shift between time periods and characters and hit their marks every time.

Sons of Hollywood runs through April 17, 2022, at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Avenue. Performances take place Wednesday-Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday-Saturday at 8:00pm and Sunday at 2:00pm. Patrons are required to show proof of vaccination and wear masks. Tickets, which includes two seating options, and more information are available at www.WindyCityPlayhouse.com.