Torch Song Trilogy

Torch Song Trilogy (1982), three one‐act plays by Harvey Fierstein. [Actors Playhouse, 1,222 perf.; Tony Award.] In The International Stud, Arnold (Fierstein), a female impersonator, thinks that with Ed ( Joel Crothers), a man he picks up in a gay bar, he may have found the love he has been looking for. But in Fugue in a Nursery, Ed is now engaged to Laurel ( Diane Tarleton), who invites Arnold and his new lover, Alan ( Paul Joynt), to Ed's farm, where things do not quite work out. Several years later, in Widows and Children First!, Ed's marriage is on the rocks and he seeks to reestablish his relationship with Arnold, who, in turn, has taken in the gay teenager David ( Matthew Broderick), whom he plans to adopt. The arrival of Arnold's mother, Mrs. Beckoff ( Estelle Getty), complicates matters for everyone, but by the end each has learned to accept the others. Each of the plays had been previously seen Off Off Broadway. Put together they made for a compassionate, if darkly funny, view of the homosexual lifestyle. The long evening was successful enough to transfer to Broadway's Little Theatre for a very long run. Harvey FIERSTEIN (b. 1954), a native of Brooklyn, became a female impersonator at fifteen, then studied at the Pratt Institute. He made his legit acting debut in an Andy Warhol play in 1971. He also wrote Spookhouse (1984), Safe Sex (1987), and the musicals La Cage aux Folles (1983) and Legs Diamond (1988). Fierstein has acted in plays by other writers as well, most memorably in The Haunted Host (1991) and Hairspray (2002).