Voice of Force

Newspaper critic Ragland Hughes is openly gay. Opera tenor Cosimo Fratangelo is famously straight. No one gay or straight says a word as they watch the men’s relationship evolve from professional association to loving friendship—so long as both men remain alive and profitable. When the body of one of the men washes ashore off Long Island Sound, convulsive testimony indicts the survivor as the prosecution’s lone suspect. The media melee that ensues not only casts unwelcome light on the forces keeping a gay man and a straight man from enjoying friendship, it brands Hughes a predator of heterosexual men and Fratangelo a sociopath torn between ambition and drugs. Part thwarted love story, part cautionary tale, part philosophical rant, VOICE OF FORCE sounds out the deep divide of sexual difference running through even the most liberal of enclaves. We know a murder has been committed but in the end we’re left deciphering what the larger crime is and how long it’s been in the making.