"Cafe Valentina is a funny, sad, touching, and extraordinarily painful play about what happens when a group divides into us vs. them," the Rev. Laura Thomas Howell wrote to me following Friday evening's performance of 'Casa Valentina' at Charles A. Brown IceHouse in Bethlehem.
I had encountered Reverend Howell at the show's opening night reception in the IceHouse lobby where she and her husband, David, joined other highly pleased audience members in the fine art of back-slapping and hand-clasping cast members while drinking wine and chattering about Selkie Theatre's gracious production of Harvey Fierstein's 2014 show.
After only a few moments speaking with her, I was confident her comments about the play would capture its essence far better than anything I myself could compose. 
"This all-too-human story illustrates" her letter continued, "a minority, ostracized by society, rejecting another even more oppressed minority."
'Casa Valentina', in the always steady and skillful hands of director George B. Miller, certainly does manage that, as a group of scrupulously discreet part-time male cross-dressers debate the risks and rewards of public exposure.
Casa Valentina is the name of a quiet and isolated Catskills resort that caters to the proclivities of self-proclaimed heterosexual men who prefer heels and wigs over golf shoes and visors. And it is at this resort that these men grapple with their inner doubts, fears, and occasional self-loathing even as they struggle to fit into dresses several sizes too small.
Mr. Miller restrains any urge to allow this tender gathering of restless souls to turn into a farce built upon men in women's clothing.
He also manages, magically, to avoid turning it into a masquerade.
Quite the opposite, these elaborately costumed and mascara-brushed men are never more themselves than when their true genders are least recognizable.
The cast is strong, as one always comes to expect in a Selkie Theatre production, led by Jerry Schmidt, with wonderful support from veterans Jim Long and David Oswald; the jolly Joshua Tyler Altorfer; an appropriately fragile Ryan MacNamara; a hulking but effective Goran Zdravkovic; and Ted Williams, whose honeyed voice resonates until well after the show is over. (I only wish he had sung his lines, on occasion.) Jeanie Olah and Rosie Damico Schatkowski, have smallish but somewhat reassuring roles as 'real' women.
As always, Miller's set and Kate Scuffle's costumes and props were elegantly and artfully simple and precisely what the material demanded.
One is left, at the close of this show, deeply entertained but undeniably sobered.
"Unfortunately," Reverend Howell's letter concluded, "it doesn't seem like we have learned much over the years...and this play reminds us of what our friends and family with "alternate lifestyles" still have to go through."
'Casa Valentina' runs through May 15, Fridays and Saturday's at 8 PM and Sundays at 3. TIckets are $20, $15 for students and seniors. For additional information please contact