BWW Reviews: IT GOES LIKE THIS Shares the Importance of Love and Acceptance

The Lee Strasberg Center is hosting the world premiere of a very timely new theatrical work by Jack Betts at The Marilyn Monroe Theatre in West Hollywood entitled IT GOES LIKE THIS which has a message that Americans, Congress and the Supreme Court need to hear as the subject of gay marriage is being put to the vote. Most importantly, it brings awareness to the discrimination and hatred faced by so many individuals in the world today.

U.S. General Douglas Gallegher (Kevin McCorkle) has it all. He's a four-star general in the U.S. Army, has a beautiful, loving wife (Rachel O'Meara) who's the press secretary to a Senator, two good-looking sons (Justin Preston and Edan Freiberger) who are musically talented, and he owns a gorgeous house near a lake. He should be happy, but he is not. In fact, he's a bit of a bully, ordering his wife and sons around as if they were troops under his command.

We first meet General Gallegher when he walks out on his sons rock music act at their local high school, telling his wife, "I know what they are and the Academy will make them what they should be." He even forbids them to take their guitars, urging them to play hard at sports and study. McCorkle's every uptight expression and movement shares the General's rigid belief system, held in place by 35 years of shame from an underlying dark secret.

When he hears that his homosexual twin brother from whom he has been estranged for thirty years has died, Gallegher goes on a trip to retrieve his brother's personal effects from a mysterious woman. And after spending a few hours with the lovely Rowena Sinclair (Laurie O'Brien), a very successful artist and pillar of the community, his shocking discovery that his twin brother has had a sex change operation, inexorably and drastically changes both their lives forever.

Photo credit: David Bartlett

Rachel O'Meara and Kevin McCorkle

Rachel O'Mears, Laurie O'Brien, Justin Preston

Justin Preston and Edan Freiberger

Laurie O'Brien

Edan Freiberger and Laurie O'Brien