It was 1982, and Jackson remembers sitting in the theater “laughing hysterically and crying” as he watched Fierstein play Arnold, a gay man with a heart of gold and a personal life that refuses to play nice. It is also a play script that produces an enjoyable reading experience.Richie Jackson was 17 when his mother took him to see Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy” on Broadway. This is a seminal work of gay writing: a window into gay New York of the 1970s, but also a timeless comic look at theĬomplexities of being gay. Lines, and deep emotion just under the surface. The comedy is sometimes of a sitcom variety (especially in the third of the plays), with one-liners following in quick succession, but there is wisdom and acute observation in the more telling It’s very funny, in that New York Jewish way. It’s important to stress, though, that this is a comedy.

Indecisive? On the latter point, I know that bisexuals object strenuously to that categorization I will just point out that Ed is the ne plus ultra of the ever-wavering bi guy. Plays occasionally seem very much of their time (Ed is preoccupied with hiding the homosexual side of his nature), but the essential questions are timeless: what (if any) is the relationshipīetween sex and love, are same-sex relationships somehow “less” than heterosexual ones, can/should a same-sex marriage/family look like a heterosexual one, are bisexuals just chronically (The contrast with Andrew Holleran’s contemporaneous Dancer from the Dance is striking.) The Society, and many gay men were more focused on simply surviving than on building a family. Yes, the play is maybe a bit ahead of its time in that respect, given that it was written at a time when gay relationships themselves were generally not accepted in That issue of what a gay “family” would look like is an eternal one. In the last of the three plays, he attempts to construct something resembling a family by adopting a gay teenager, to the horror of On-again, off-again relationship with a bisexual guy named Ed. The three plays cover about five years, during which Arnold has an

It’s essentially the story of Arnold, a New York drag queen, and his search for happiness. Yes, but it’s not a hardship, more like a pleasure. So you get to read them twice, once in their entirety and then again in a condensed version?

The new edition of the plays (published in 2018) contains the three original plays together with Produce a more easily digestible evening of theatre, under the title Torch Song, in 2017.

The latter was later adapted and shortened to It is three individual (relatively short) plays- The International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery and Widows and Childrenįirst!-which were originally produced in 19, and then mounted on Broadway as a single entity called Torch Song Trilogy in 1982.

Harvey fierstein torch song trilogy