By Jim Seavor, Options

Our own “Boy meets girl. boy loses girl. Will boy get girl back?” musical. Except, since it’s our romantic musical, it’s “Boy meets boy. Boy loses boy. Will boy get boy back?”

And it all takes place in Paris. Not the real Paris, but the Paris that had Gene Kelly dancing through it: the Paris where Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant played a game of charade.

It’s the Paris that Trinity Rep Artistic Director Curt Columbus grew up watching on television in Newcastle, Penn. “The last exit as you leave Pennsylvania and enter Ohio.”

Columbus says the Saturday afternoon movies guided his notion of what was cosmopolitan and what was appropriately classy and romantic. ”When I think of the most romantic time and place I can imagine, I think of Paris at that moment.”

Not surprisingly, his musical is named Paris by Night. For Curt, who wrote the book and lyrics, the city is a character. “For whatever reason, both

in the Hollywood version and in real life … you are more open to yourself in Paris. Whenever I’m there I find I’m more open to my own urges, if you will. It is about love because you do wake up a little bit. It’s only love when you wake up.”

Columbus is sitting on a sofa in a small conference room at his office at the theater. The walls are brick. Windows look out on Washington Street while Ethel Barrymore watches over things from a large, formal portrait that dominates one wall.

Columbus has been working on Paris by Night for about ten years. The characters are an amalgam of the types he found in the gay fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, which he was reading at the time.

There’s Sam, an American expatriate whose past has left him convinced love will never find him. Buck is a soldier and boxer. They meet. Joe Wilson, Jr. is Sam. James Royce Edwards, new to Trinity, is Buck. His New York productions include Altar Boyz. The other principal characters include a longtime friend of Sam’s, a singer looking for love and a career, soldier friends of Buck and the owner of a café. They are played by Stephen Berenson, Janice Duclos, Mauro Hantman, Stephen Thorne and Rachel Warren.

The music for Paris by Night came from Andre Pluess and Amy Warren, two people Columbus worked with in Chicago. She was an actress and the front woman of this “really hot rock band” when they met. Pluess was a student of Columbus’ and was writing a musical version of Dante’s Inferno when they met.

They discovered they all love cool jazz - the kind played by the Modern Jazz Quartet. The music in Paris by Night will be played by a trio. The human voice is the fourth instrument.

The play’s first draft had only the gay love story. A straight romance has since been added. (Rachel Warren and Stephen Thorne handle that.) One character’s gender was changed because Janice Duclos wanted to take part. She was also given a solo.

Paris by Night is being directed by Birgitta Victorson and Eugene Lee has designed the set. Columbus says there are gay musicals in the canon, pointing to the Falsettos plays, but they’re more AIDS plays. “I wanted The Music Man for a gay audience.” He wants people to walk away with the impression of a romance set in Paris.

“I’m not trying to make a political statement here. What’s happened here is that politics have become bound up in the personal story telling. If you have a black gay character in your musical … race and sexuality are issues, but it’s not an issue play.” Paris by Night begins performances April 25 and runs through June 1. Trinity has planned an LGBT night at Paris by Night. It’s May 1 and it will benefit Options.