Straight Talk

By Gerald Clarke

TORCH SONG TRILOGY

by Harvey Fierstein

Several things are wrong with this evening of one-acters: it is too long (more than four hours with intermissions); it is often inconsistent; and for embarrassingly long periods it becomes as mawkish as an afternoon soap opera. But what is right about it is absolutely right. Playwright Harvey Fierstein has created characters so vivid and real that they linger in the mind, talking the night away, long after the lights have been turned out and everyone has left off-Broadway's Actors Playhouse.

Most arresting of all is the hero, Arnold Beckoff, played by the author. Arnold's occupation is drag queen; he sings torch songs at a Manhattan gay bar called the International Stud. As the first play opens, he is sitting in costume in his dressing room. He delivers some straight talk about his life, his loves and his lovers, and very quickly, without seeming to try, seduces the audience. Arnold is one of those characters who demand--and receive--an audience's affection. He is tough, funny and, in his own upside-down way, almost clairvoyant in his perceptions. "I always thought of myself as a kind person," he says later on, "not small, but generous in a bitchy sort of way."

Arnold falls in love with a school-teacher named Ed (Court Miller), who is confused as to whether he is straight, gay or ambidextrous. After his romance with Arnold, Ed decides that he is straight, more or less, and marries Laurel (Diane Tarleton). A year later, Arnold and his new lover Alan (Paul Joynt) pay a visit to the new couple in their farmhouse in Vermont, and Ed finds himself confused again. He is still attracted to Arnold; he is sorely tempted by Alan, the blond, all-American boychik; and he is in love with his wife. The permutations are both hilarious and touching, and Fierstein has appropriately staged the whole piece in one giant bed.

The last part, titled Widows and Children First!, is both the best and the worst. It takes place five years later. Alan has been killed in a "fag bash," an attack on homosexuals by macho punks; Ed has finally split from Laurel; and Arnold is in the process of adopting a gay teen-ager (Matthew Broderick). Add to that a visit from Mrs. Beckoff (Estelle Getty), the ultimate Jewish mother, and Fierstein has enough material for another three-acter. He has in fact perhaps too much to handle--or too little sense of structure to handle it well. He seems to have just tacked everything hurriedly together, without bothering to smooth the rough edges.

With all of its flaws, however, Torch Song Trilogy, is a remarkable achievement. All the actors seem right, and several are exceptional, but the evening, in acting as well as writing, clearly belongs to Fierstein, 27. The son of a Brooklyn handkerchief maker, he began working as a drag queen in East Village clubs at 16 before turning to playwriting at 19. Onstage, his voice derives from Tallulah Bankhead, and his drag-queen clothes would look good on Carmen Miranda. In every other way he is unique. Like the very best actors, he does not play a part, he inhabits it. --By Gerald Clarke

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