Straight up... with a twist

by Patrick Verel
Staff Writer
July 12, 2002

MISUNDERSTOOD (Contributed photo) Jul 12, 2002 MISUNDERSTOOD: "We want to be normal, ..." (Contributed photo) Jul 12, 2002

You can really know all the wrong things, says writer and performer Paul Stroili, especially if you're one of those men who would sooner pick out a bolt of fabric than go fly fishing.

If, in addition to this, you are also straight, you are a "renaissance geek." How does he know this? Because Stroili, who was born in Greenwich and raised in Ridgefield, is an unabashed "renaissance geek" himself, and he's built a one-man show around the concept. In "Straight Up with a Twist," which opens tonight at Stamford's Curtain Call Theatre, Stroili declares the world a cruel place when you're a heterosexual with good taste and an eye for color.

"It's any affectation that is outside the realm of traditional American maleness," says Stroili. "It's all the small things, like knowing that the pillowcases shouldn't be facing out."

Relying mostly on his own experiences growing up in Connecticut, Stroili explores what it's like to come of age in a culture that often mislabels well-dressed, well-coiffed men as homosexuals. There's a whole class of men like him, he asserts, who know the difference between flan and creme brulee and can fold a fitted sheet, but are as straight as a two-by-four.

He bears no ill will toward gay men; in fact, he jokes, life might actually be easier if he were gay.

"The first comparison people want to make when I talk about people like this is to Frasier or his brother Niles (on the sitcom "Frasier"), but they exude a sort of arrogance about it," he says.

"We want to be normal, we just notice when a woman shouldn't wear horizontal stripes because it really doesn't work for her."

To fill out the show, Stroili approaches the subject from his own point of view, that of his mother, a German immigrant from the Bronx, N.Y., and his father, an Old World Italian ("The only two nationalities more violent than the Irish," he cracks).

He debuted the show three years ago at the Gascon Center Theater in Los Angeles, and has since played in Garden Grove, Calif.; Chicago; and most recently, at his 20th reunion at Ridgefield High School. The show has undergone periodic tweaking since its debut. The title, for instance, was originally "Renaissance Geek."

"But people were wondering 'Does he have an obsession with Renaissance fairs or something?' " says Stroili.

When he finds himself correcting his wife, Monica's, choice of wine at a restaurant, for instance, that has to go in the act.

"I would say on average half a dozen women come up to me after my shows and say, 'This is my husband; I just never knew there was a name for it,' " he says. "I see a lot of the arm nudging going on between couples in the audience."

Playing a whole cast of characters is a large part of the show's appeal, because everyone's opinion is either explored, mocked or explained.

"At first it did well with the 'clad in black vodka-drinkers' in L.A.," he says. "They were laughing at the pop references and the industry speak. Then we took it to Garden Grove in Orange county. It's very suburban, very laid back there, and what clicked with them was less me playing myself and more the family trying to figure out what I am."

Although the show is all meant in good fun, Stroili says there are some things he felt he had to tread lightly on.

"My big concern was I didn't want to come across as this closeted gay who wasn't going to come to terms with who he is," he says.

In the play, his mother even confesses to having started a support group called M.A.P.H.O., "Mothers who Would Actually Prefer Homosexual Offspring."

"If there is a point of view, it is to just knock down the obsession with labels," he says. "We can't all explain the infield fly rule, and all gay men aren't effeminate sprites."

As if to further prove his point, he recalls bringing a wine bucket to a soccer game for his Gatorade when he was only 12 years old.

"The kids all laughed at me, but I had the coldest Gatorade," he laughs.

Paul Stroili's "Straight Up With A Twist" plays tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20, $13 for seniors and $10 for students. The Curtain Call Theater is at 1349 Newfield Ave., Stamford. Call 461-6358, ext. 25.

Copyright © 2002, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.