EDGE New York City

Just turn on VH1 most weekends and you’ll undoubtedly come across a special about the 1980s. It is the decade we love to make fun of, be it for its big hair, its music, its fashions, its tacky videos and television shows, or all those John Hughes movies that were so popular then. (Where is John Hughes today, anyway - working on a Breakfast Club sequel?) Madonna caught the public’s eye, looking as if she needed to go Weight Watchers; but if there was a pop queen from the decade it was Cyndi Lauper, whose Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was something of its unofficial anthem.

Boys, gay boys that is, wanted to have fun as well; but the pursuit of happiness was filled with both anxiety and prejudice. The AIDS epidemic was at its height, and society had marginalized gays and lesbians because of it. For those coming out, it was a time of much stress. Gay characters may have been turning up on progressive television shows like The Golden Girls, but it was mostly the time when the Closet ruled and a gay life was defined by the ghetto.

At the time playwright Anthony Wilkinson was a teenager growing up on Staten Island, where he was to come out in the 1990s. He loved the 1980s, though, especially the music that was still being played in clubs, such as Spectrum in Brooklyn, the first gay club he recalls hanging out in. It offered a decidedly different experience from those he would later visit on Manhattan. "It was kind-of a Cheers type-of-crowd because it was the same people who went to the one bar, and pretty much everybody knew everybody," he recalled last week.

Why he was reminiscing has to do with his latest play - Boys Just Wanna Have Fun that comes to the Actors Playhouse in the Village on an off-night schedule (Fridays at 10pm and Saturdays at 3pm.) His play is a comedy set in a club like Spectrum (that he renames Potions), and concerns the coming out of a police detective (whom Wilkinson plays) when he heads an undercover investigation of drug dealing at the club. In the course of the play, the detective falls for the drug dealer he’s trailing.

Wilkinson chose Staten Island as a setting because of the one of the basic tenets of writing: write what you know. "That’s where I’m from, and I know from my own experience of coming out I was surrounded by so many crazy people that I find the story - aside from the detective element - much like my own. It was like what coming out was like for me. Staten Island was a little bit behind the time in the 1980s, and still is. Even today it is the least accepting boroughs. When I went to the city, it was very different. It was the hub of all ethnicities, and you never saw the same people twice - maybe a couple of familiar faces, but that was it. But the Staten Island crowd had a very strong Italian-American contingency, and it was a very interesting group. And I wanted to tell a story that people haven’t already seen."

Boys Just Wanna Have Fun follows the same pattern that Wilkinson used for his first off-Broadway venture, My Big Gay Italian Wedding, which ran at the Actors Playhouse for six sold-out months in 2003-2004 before transferring to New World Stages for an additional four months. Critical reception of his earlier play was decidedly mixed, though the New York Times wrote "The cast does seem to be having a good time, which is a plus, and the show is genuinely entertaining when it shifts into pure vaudeville."

"I think the Times hit the nail on the head with their review when they called it genuinely entertaining," he recalled. "It wasn’t a great piece of writing - it was a fun piece. But the moral of the story is that it sold. It did very well. It sold out for the first six months and did really, really well, because I think people looked at it as entertainment.

"It was pretty much a romp," he continued, "but at the time Gay Marriage was pretty much a big political thing. It still is, but it was pretty much at the height of it. So after seeing Tony and Tina’s wedding, I thought it was time for a gay wedding. It wasn’t interactive, though, because I wanted to send out a message in addition to it being a farce. I wanted to drive home the point that gay marriage is something that people will accept. It was a big comedy with 23 people in the cast, which was pretty big for an Off-Broadway. And it got a great response. People came to see it over and over again because it was catchy and fun."

After the success of that play Wilkinson took some time off from writing to concentrate on his career as an Associate Director of the soap opera One Life To Live, where he works with his co-writer for his latest script Teresa Anne Cicala. "After I wrote this one, Teresa, who is one of the producers, did an extensive rewrite to polish it up, and since it was so extensive, I gave her a writing credit. ... There’s a little bit of drama to it, but it’s mostly a hilarious comedy. We have some funny drag queens and some characters that are always coked up. It depicts the 1980s, but as a total comedy. But I think this is better written than the last one because it has a more cohesive story. I’m hoping the critics will appreciate it more, but I know in my heart the audience will love it because it is very entertaining."

"Boys.." is directed by Cicala and Sonia Blangiardo, who also has a soap opera connection as a director on As The World Turns and producer on One Life to Live.

Does Wilkinson feel that working on a daytime soap has informed his work?

"Working in soaps you’re limited in your creative input because you must work with a team at all times, which I love to do. And I’ve learned from it because the writing in soaps is very first level dialogue. But I went to school for writing. I have always wanted to be a writer, but went into production because I was offered a position here that I took right out of college. But theater has been my real passion."

At first he was reluctant to take a role in his latest effort as he had in his first, but was convinced. "I use to do stand-up comedy when I was younger, and I always enjoyed it. I don’t consider myself a Tony Award winning actor, but I think I play myself really well. Still it is something I do for fun and for experience, because I think if you want to become a good producer some day you have to experience all sides of the industry. So I debated about performing in this show, but the producers said who better to play yourself than you?"

One social issue that Wilkinson chose not to address in his play was AIDS. "I think that a lot of plays have done that already," he explained. "Plays like The Normal Heart depicted the tragedy of the 1980s, how hard it was when the AIDS epidemic occurred. I wanted to stay away from that. I feel that it’s been done and I wanted to keep it on a light note. And since it’s a flashback, and it’s my character looking at the 1980s through rose-colored glasses, so intentionally left that out and made it a very fun, uplifting piece that people will come and see and laugh and enjoy."

As for his future?

"My goal was that before I was 30 was to produce an off Broadway show, and I’ve had two. Now my goal is that before I’m 40 to produce, or write, a Broadway show."

Through April 14, at the Actors Playhouse, 100 Seventh Avenue South, New York, NY. Performances: Friday at 10pm, Saturday at 3pm. Tickets: $55.50. 212-239-6200 or 800-432-7250, or visit Boys Just Wanna Have Fun website.