In the art-for-art’s-sake world of Christophe Honoré and his characters—gay men in love with love and the legends of representation that give their at-risk lives sense, sensibility, and station—matters of love, life, death are navigated through a filter of literature and performance, and this combination of high art and pop sentimentality brings solace.

In PLAIRE, AIMER ET COURIR VITE / SORRY ANGEL—now playing at the Nuart—the brief 1990s encounter of Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) and Arthur (Vincent Lacoste) is haunted by the long shadows and quotations of some of the writers Honoré recently celebrated in his stage piece Les Idoles—Bernard-Marie Koltès, Hervé Guibert—supplemented by queer icons and allies Jean Genet, Isabelle Huppert, Robert Wilson, Walt Whitman, W.H. Auden, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Jacques, not willing to undergo yet another course of AIDS treatment, is reaching the end of his story just as Arthur—like Honoré, a transplant from the provinces—is beginning his. With a little help from his idols, Jacques can put Arthur on the path to become a proper young Parisian.

SORRY ANGEL

Through March 21.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

From top: Pierre Deladonchamps (foreground) and Vincent Lacoste in Sorry Angel; Deladonchamps; Deladonchamps and Lacoste; Lacoste.