LATITUDE, Phoenix Theater of Indianapolis and Bailiwick Repertory. By the end of Tony McDonald’s New Age love epic, part of Bailiwick’s “Pride Series ’98,” two time-traveling gay lovers have finally recognized the influence of their previous lives on the present. Heading “back to the future,” they fall in love all over again. But in Bryan Fonseca’s throbbing staging the hokey finale is far less persuasive than the lovers’ three earlier encounters. In ancient Greece (which here includes anachronistic references to “Brutus” and a “forum”) the younger lover, an artist, prefers glory and war to love and poetry. In jazz age England he’s betrayed by his older lover, a closeted husband dependent on his rich wife. During the Spanish Inquisition he chooses exile with his beloved, a liberal-minded Paris professor, over religion and a bigoted sister. And in modern-day America the lovers discover that the “latitudes” of love have linked them across the centuries.
