The Fearless Flight of ‘Burning Blue’

They sit side by side, D.M.W. Greer speaking earnestly and John T. Hickok nodding his head and half-smiling in sure, steady agreement.

They could be the central characters in “Burning Blue,” the tale of do-anything-for-one-another Navy flier buddies that they are here to talk about. Greer, bundled into a bomber jacket, is even dressed for the part.

Yet while Greer and Hickok have, indeed, soared together, they have done so as author and director, respectively, of the play, which became a surprise hit in London in 1995, was optioned for a movie by Working Title Films and arrives at the Court Theatre in West Hollywood on Jan. 30 in its American premiere.

“We have had so many adventures together,” Hickok says of the man he describes as “one of my best friends in the world.”

“We have a lot of respect for each other,” Greer adds. “We’ve been down in the trenches with each other, and there is probably very little that each of us doesn’t know about the other.”

Having opened quietly at the King’s Head theater in North London in early 1995, “Burning Blue” quickly amassed reams of newsprint as Britons debated its depiction of a naval investigation into alleged homosexual activity. The play moved to the renowned Haymarket theater in the West End, then to the Ambassadors, and the talk continued to fly as fast as an FA-18.

Dazed and delighted, Greer and Hickok--Americans who, by happenstance, had taken the play to London--drank it all in.

Three years later, they find themselves sitting onstage at the Court, amid sections of a set that suggests below decks on an aircraft carrier. Hickok, who designed the set, keeps looking around to evaluate its installation. He lives in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and has been in Los Angeles for a couple of days; Greer, who now spends much of his time in London, is just hours off the plane.

They are different in many ways. Greer is dark-haired and Hickok is light. Greer is almost painfully self-analyzing, while Hickok is laid-back and breezy. Greer grew up in a military family and spent 6 1/2 years in the Navy, training to fly helicopters, then handling Navy public relations in New York City; Hickok has no military experience. Greer had collected just a few acting credits before writing this, his first play, while Hickok holds extensive regional acting and directing credits.

Yet the similarities, they say, are much more striking--such as the fact that both are 40, born just a week apart.

“Our aesthetic senses are very similar,” Hickok says. “And we have very similar senses of humor. . . .”

“Which,” Greer jumps in to add, “is really important when you’re working long hours together.”

“Johnny knows exactly how to play me,” Greer continues with a grin and a sideways glance at his pal. “He’ll say, ‘David, this is so great what you did here. This is brilliant, but you know what . . . ‘ “

Hickok, whose eyes have been crinkling mischievously, jumps in to finish: “ ‘ . . . if we could just make it a little clearer.’ ”

Set in 1989, with flashbacks to previous events, the fictional “Burning Blue” focuses on the son of a four-star admiral, Lt. Daniel “Dano” Lynch; Dano’s best buddy, Lt. Will Stephensen; and the handsome Iron Man competitor who upsets the balance of their friendship, Lt. Matthew Blackwood. As Navy men who fly off of aircraft carriers in the pitching, unforgiving ocean, they live in a world that allows no margin for error. That extends to their personal lives, as they learn when Dano and Matt’s sighting in a Hong Kong gay bar brings them under scrutiny as part of the military’s no-homosexuals-allowed policies.

Having worked together on this story for 5 1/2 years now, Greer and Hickok have put their lives into each other’s hands as solemnly and confidently as these Navy fliers.

Their paths first intersected in 1990 when they were introduced after a performance of a play in which Hickok was appearing. A few months later, they bumped into each other again on the streets of New York. Then, in 1991, they found themselves cast opposite one another in a production of the military drama “A Few Good Men” at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut.

Early on, it was Hickok’s wife, Madeleine Homan, whom Greer got to know better, however. She was a career coach and Greer--sampling jobs as diverse as public relations, freelance graphic design and acting--turned to her for guidance.

As part of his career search, he sat down to write the story that had been burning inside him. He shared it with Homan, who passed it along to her husband. Hooked by his first look at “Burning Blue,” Hickok became script advisor and director.

The play grew out of Greer’s experiences in the Navy from the early to middle ‘80s--specifically, the pain of losing friends to flying accidents and his frustrated horror at witnessing careers ruined by investigations into alleged homosexual behavior.

The deaths, he says, added up to “about a dozen fairly good friends,” plus “other people that I know about.” Among them, Greer says--looking up into the rafters, his eyes turning glassy--was “my best friend, my closest friend ever.”

As for the military’s much-discussed unwillingness to tolerate gays or lesbians in its ranks, Greer says that a close friend, the son of an admiral, was subjected to 36 straight hours of interrogation before he resigned from the Navy to avoid tarnishing his father’s reputation. “That’s all he ever wanted to do was fly. That’s it. And he was good.”

During Greer’s years in the service, he learned of “four or five” additional cases of Navy personnel “raked over the coals by the NIS [Naval Investigative Service].”

Though Greer didn’t become aware of his own homosexuality until midway through his military career, he was haunted by these incidents--as well as the underground news of a Navy helicopter pilot who was obliged to mourn in silence when his male partner, a Navy SEAL, was killed in a training maneuver. “He had no place to put this grief,” Greer says. “He was marooned. I just thought, ‘This is so unbelievably cruel.’ ”

Greer wrote the first draft of his play in 1992, before President Clinton--in his early days in office--found himself at war with the military over his announced support for allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces.

“I didn’t set out to say anything” about military policies, Greer says, “but I think, ultimately, I am saying something.

“The irony is so amazing: that freedom of speech, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and defended by our military, is something that they can’t even enjoy themselves. It’s hard to fathom.”

Still, Greer and Hickok characterize their piece, first and foremost, as a love story.

“The metaphor I always use with the cast,” Hickok says, “is: A seed has fallen into a crack in the middle of a six-lane highway, and regardless of the fact that there is asphalt on either side and huge trucks rumbling by--an utterly hostile environment--it must grow. Because the rain comes down and the sun shines--and it must be what it must be.”

After a couple of intense but ultimately unfruitful associations with would-be New York producers, Greer and Hickok took the play to London when a friend of Greer’s said he’d like to stage it there.

Between the play’s small launch and its bigger Haymarket opening, Working Title, the up-and-coming London-based production company behind such hits as “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” optioned the movie rights. The project is still being developed, with a script in the works, the company says.

After London, “Burning Blue” was staged in South Africa and in Israel, but only now have all the pieces fallen into place for the first American production.

The up-and-down, full-throttle nature of the experience sounds a lot like Greer’s description of fliers being catapulted off of aircraft carriers into the burning blue sky.

“There is nothing more stressful,” Greer says of a Navy flier’s life, “nothing more exciting--except for, maybe, being in the theater.”

*

“BURNING BLUE,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood. Dates: Opens Jan. 30. Regular schedule: Thursdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Prices: $22.50-$30. Phone: (888) 566-8499.