VERBATIM Hung like a...

BACK BITES

Terrence McNally's play `Love! Valour! Compassion!' opened on Broadway on 14 February. The New Yorker conducted an informal survey of theatregoers...

Straight woman, Upper East Side: The play is truly sad, but that's not the only thing about it that you remember. The main thing is this young actor who is lying in the sun on his back during a lot of the second act. He's wearing only dark glasses and silver hoop earrings. He's young. Young is the point. I was sitting in the first row, and this actor - his character is called Ramon, or sometimes Chiquita - has his knees bent and his legs are pretty much apart. I kept straining to look around and see if any other people were staring at him, and it seemed, oddly, that they weren't. Then this character stood up for a few seconds and faced the audience. Now you could see all of his penis, which was extraordinarily long, and everything behind it was huge. It was.

Gay man, Chelsea: Here I am, I've been to every sex club, and I've seen people beat one another with whips, and I was still shocked. I still took a step back. But I think maybe that's because he does have such a huge cock. It was huge. You have to say, "Was that how he got the part?" It is huge. Absolutely. And I've seen quite a few.

Straight man, Hell's Kitchen: If one goes by the Greek norm - Greek statues are far from well hung - it was a disproportionately long penis. Nowadays, the sexual confusion is such that exaggerated differences come to be valued aesthetically in a way that would have been thought preposterous by the people who founded the Western aesthetic.

Straight woman, Bel Air, California: Well, I never used to really look- look-look, you know? I kind of do now. I still haven't really looked in the light. The other night, the man I live with was taking a pink Vitabath, and that's the closest I've got to examining and looking. So in New York, at that play, I just sat there with my mouth wide open, and I was mesmerized by it.