The Hottest Play in Palm Springs Is Staged at a Nude Men's Resort

If you can, time your next visit to Palm Springs to check out Electricity, an immersive gay dramedy performed in a motel room at INNdulge (INNdulge.com), where a handful of ticket holders sit mere inches from the action.

Written by costar Terry Ray (who plays Gary), the show explores the journey of two men who hook up in a motel room after their small-town, 10-year high school reunion. Nicknamed "Gary the Fairy" in high school, Gary is so closeted that he has invented a wife. Brad the cad (that's not his nickname, just an apt moniker) is played to perfection by gay indie film star Mel England. Brad is out and sexy -- but filled with so much self-loathing and internalized homophobia that he numbs his pain with copious amounts of sex, coke, and booze. The two men end up meeting every decade for the next 30 years in that same hotel room.

Playwright Ray says he crafted Electricity "to chronicle the journey that so many gay men who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s can readily relate to, the journey from a place where silence sometimes equaled death, to one where equality might just be a reality."

Electricity has an exclusive engagement at INNdulge in Palm Springs and is truly immersive theater, where the audience is in the same space as the performers. Each show has a maximum of 20 audience members who check in for the high school reunion reception at the hotel's front desk and are later led into Gary and Brad's hotel room, where 30 years of a relationship unfold.

When the men argue, the bellowing literally engulfs the room (one audience member later remarked it felt as it had just before his parents divorced). When Brad jumps naked on the bed to entice Gary, his cock is there for all to see. It's fun to watch which audience members look away as scenes become almost uncomfortably intimate. The immersion adds a whole level of credibility to an experience that feels vividly real, especially for gay audience members over 40. A must-see.

A special New York production of Electricity is planned for October 19, and the show returns to Palm Springs in early November. Click here for details.