at least at first. His intense reaction creates a catalyst for the men to interrogate each other about their sexualities and, as they go deeper into their pasts, to discover what they’ve both done recently that might have led each of them to cause the death of a friend.  

Death and guilt now take center stage and replace sex as the business of the meeting.  Teddy’s traveling companion, Eddie (played in flashback by Jeremy), has been suffering from depression; it could be a matter of neurochemistry, or it could be pre-wedding anxiety. After making promises and reassurances to Eddie’s fiancée, Teddy brought his friend to Europe in hopes that the trip would do him good. But Eddie, in the grip of a manic episode, left four days ago, and hasn’t been heard from since. Now his fiancée tries to phone every few minutes, but Teddy, fearful of what news she might impart, refuses to answer.

Jeremy is also gripped by guilt and fear. While in Uganda he got to know a gay man named Nicholas (played in flashback by Teddy). The two became close, even emotionally intimate, but things remained platonic.  Then American evangelicals brought a message of homophobic hatred to Uganda, and the political situation quickly turned lethal, with gay men being identified, lists of names compiled and mobs burning victims alive in the streets. Jeremy, in a mix of panic and blind optimism, miscalculated the risks for Nicholas.

The meat of the play is built on each actor playing the friend the other actor feels they have abandoned and perhaps even left for dead.  It is a chance for them to work out their guilt and pain.  The hotel becomes a sort of “safe space” that quickly becomes too charged especially when you add the sexual energy underpinnings that still remain under the scene.  It is a lot to put into this extended one act – and this jumping back and forth into three different realities is a lot to imagine in this realistic setting of an Amsterdam hotel, but you cannot deny the energy the play is able to generate and the fear it can conger up.  The acting in the piece was potent.