A Glowing Trio

WHEN THE PRODUCER of the Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy accepted the 1983 Tony Award for Best Play, he thanked his male co-producer and lover for making it all possible. That in a few words epitomizes what the play successfully strives to do--not merely bring homosexuality "out of the closet," but place it in a broader social context, speaking of the problems of love, life and relationships as they affect everyone. Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy is an extremely well written, well plotted and, judging by this production, well performed exploration of what one person, who happens to be homosexual, wants out of life.

We discover that what Arnold Beckoff wants--a career, a home, a person to share it with is no different from what everyone seeks. With sharp wit and a touch of pathos. Fierstein can appeal to both gay and straight audiences as he openly reveals how similar are the problems and desires of both worlds and how the worlds are not nearly as far apart as they might superficially seem to be. Arnold is a nightclub drag queen who falls in love, loses his lover to a woman, wants to raise a child, and has to cope with a nagging Jewish mother through it all. It can happen to anyone.

That indeed is the point of the play, a collection of three one-act vignettes written separately that cover six years in Arnold's life (and in Fierstein's life, as it is largely autobiographical). Stretching over 10 scenes and two intermissions in 3 hours and 30 minutes, the play is long and runs the risk of losing its audience. Occasionally, the pacing does drag and one can't help from checking the watch or fidgeting with the coat. Overall, however, the dialogue as presented by some very fine performers entices us, and we can truly empathize with Arnold as he makes his way through triumphs and many disappointments.

AS ARNOLD, Charles Adler takes on a very demanding role which requires him to be on stage, exposing his soul throughout the entire play. Adler begins rather weakly, coming off as a whining, complaining nuisance. He improves rapidly, however, and by the cathartic third act we must believe that Arnold is indeed very proud of what he is, what he does, and what he wants to do. He doesn't want the squalor of the back room bars; he wants a neat apartment near a park, a nice place where he can build his family. Adler quite successfully reveals Arnold's inner strength, a resolve developed through years of taunts, ridicule, and disapproval, and shows it to us with a candor and sincerity which is both disarming and comfortably appealing.

Estelle Getty, repeating her Broadway portrayal of Arnold's mother, is superb as the classic sharp-witted fastidious Jewish mother, who can not come to accept her son's way of life. With perfect comic timing and the characteristic Brooklynese--moved--to--Miami Beach inflections, Getty delivers such gems as "You have your whole life ahead of you...while mine is flashing before my eyes," "What do I say...do I tell you how to run your life?" and the ultimate, "You get only one mother in this world." Through the humor and blunt directness, she expresses her own pain and frustration, her own strength and resolve, revealing that what her son feels is really not so alien to her. The scene becomes very familiar, and suddenly we realize that this is a more realistic slice of life that we ever expected to see in a drag queen's autobiography.

Among the other cast members. Meg Mackay is very strong as the "other" woman, cuttingly sarcastic and yet quite vulnerable, giving almost a heterosexual mirror image of Arnold. Christopher Stryker is wonderfully vapid and shallow as Alan, the pretty model who Arnold takes up with on the rebound; Jonathan Del Arco is impressive as the gay teenager Arnold seeks to adopt. Only Tom Stechschulte, as the confused bisexual Ed, doesn't quite measure up to the caliber of the other performances.

There was a time in the not so distant past when a play dealing directly with homosexuality was box office poison. Today, Torch Song Trilogy continues in its third year on Broadway, while La Cage aux Folles (for which Fierstein wrote the book) plays to standing room audiences down the street. And so what is Fierstein trying to say in these works? It is not a political statement about homosexuality, nor it is an apology. The idea he expresses so eloquently is one of self-respect, of realizing one's worth and striving for what one desires and deserves. It is this honesty, and this universality, that makes Torch Song Trilogy the critical and commercial success it is.