Giovanni's Room
Quintessence Theatre
7137 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia
Showing through July 6, 2025
Seen June 20
“[Men] always need a woman to tell them the truth,” James Baldwin wrote in his 1956 classic Giovanni’s Room. That line takes on new meaning in Quintessence Theatre’s world premiere of the first sanctioned stage adaptation of the story, in particular through the addition of a transgender character who, unlike the closeted male protagonist, refuses to be anything less than herself.
Baldwin wrote the book from the perspective of David, a young gay American whose prejudicial and protected life unravels when he travels to Paris and begins a love affair with an Italian man named Giovanni. A Black, gay civil rights advocate, Baldwin used first person narration to expose the conflicting expressions of hate and love experienced by a straight passing white man during a time when homosexuality was criminalized in America. Quintessence’s production confronts a modernized version of this tension: While our mainstream knowledge of the spectrum of gender and sexuality has broadened since the ‘50s, our country’s dedication to defending heteronormativity and hating difference hasn’t changed.
The inclusion of a trans woman in the show is an important shift from the original story that carries the novel’s exploration of identity into the present moment. Named “Flaming Princess,” in reference to an openly gay man in the original text who tells David he is going to burn in hell, she can quickly see that David is gay despite his persistent, public denial. Her steely and knowing gaze is a constant threat to his equilibrium in their shared scenes, and David’s outward disgust towards her translates his conflicted internal world onto the stage.
The Flaming Princess is a pivotal character in the book’s transition out of literature and into theater. Without paragraphs of text offering us direct insight into David’s private thoughts, the Flaming Princess stands in as the catalyst for actions that reveal David’s deep prejudices. She teases David one night when she discovers he's moved in with Giovanni, knowingly alluding to the fact that the pair are more than just roommates. Scared of the truth, David spits out slurs in her direction, then picks up another girl on the street who he takes back to his boyfriend’s apartment to prove his false commitment to heterosexuality.
His hookup, a girl named Sue, is in turn the person who speaks honestly through monologue after David falls asleep. Whereas the book focuses on the complex psychology of David alone, the stage production lends the spotlight to the side characters he affects through his guilty behaviors; Sue, alone in her bra next to a close-eyed David, speaks to the sterility of their sexual encounter, recognizing her body as a task to be completed in the exchange.
The internal life of the Flaming Princess, on the other hand, is not written into the script. But her presence foils the abundance of cis women included in the original story who see themselves as victims of David’s lies.
The women who want David are similar to David himself; they are searching for protection in the form of a husband, a financial partner, rather than looking solely for love. David’s own fear of losing financial support from his father similarly plays a heavy role in his refusal to reckon openly with his sexuality.
There are countless stories today about families still turning their backs on queer relatives while increasingly conservative governmental policies dissolve their social safety nets. This is especially true in the case of trans healthcare; the banning of gender-affirming medical care for trans youth in Tennessee under the Skrmetti ruling is a prime example.
It’s David’s elderly landlord who tells him that men need “a woman to tell them the truth.” It’s an ironic line given that she, like everyone else, is caught up in the illusions of husbands and wives, of marriage, of economic stability and of cultural normalcy.
The Flaming Princess is the character closest to Baldwin’s notion of freedom; she chooses to divorce herself from others’ ideas of how things should be in order to reclaim what really is, no matter the cost.
