As the title suggests, Torch Song Trilogy originated as a series of three one-act plays that premiered as separate productions before Fierstein knitted them into a single three-act drama. It opened Off-Broadway in 1981 and moved to Broadway a few months later, earning Fierstein multiple prizes including Tony and Drama Desk Awards for best play and best actor. Since the show was about four hours long, Fierstein made extensive cuts when he transformed his script into a screenplay, condensing the storyline and adjusting the dialogue to convey the essential ideas with maximum efficiency. He also discarded the titles of the original plays: The International Stud, named after a gay bar; Fugue in a Nursery, named after the musical structure of the dialogue; and Widows and Children First!, referring to character Arnold Beckoff's mother and foster son. But traces of the three-part structure linger when the film periodically fades to black, then starts a new episode with an indication of how much time has passed in the interim.
Fierstein plays Arnold, the main character of the semiautobiographical story. He's a small-time drag performer earning a modest living as a torch singer and comic in a New York nightclub. Love enters his life in 1971, when a chance meeting in a gay bar introduces him to Ed Reese (Brian Kerwin), an affable guy who teaches school in Brooklyn and spends his leisure days refurbishing an upstate farmhouse. Arnold and Ed make a good couple, but Ed's bisexuality eventually leads him into a serious relationship with Laurel (Karen Young), and his romance with Arnold reaches a breaking point. They remain keenly interested in each other, though, and Laurel is sophisticated enough to treasure Arnold's friendship despite - or even because of - his love for Ed, which never really goes away.
The next part of the film covers several years in the 1970s. Arnold is now in a committed relationship with Alan Simon (Matthew Broderick), a handsome young model who seems to be his ideal mate, even though Alan isn't entirely faithful, allowing himself to be seduced by Ed during a weekend visit to Ed and Laurel's country home. Settling into a contented middle-class routine, Arnold and Alan decide to become foster parents and move into a new apartment large enough to accommodate the child they hope to adopt. But tragedy strikes when Alan intervenes in a horrific gay-bashing incident, trying to save a victim and losing his own life instead. Arnold is devastated.
Arnold's mom makes a few appearances in the early portions of the film, but she becomes a major character in the last section, set at the start of the 1980s. Ma Beckoff (Anne Bancroft) is a stereotypical Jewish mother living in Florida since her husband's death. She is fraught with ambivalence over Arnold's gay lifestyle, which he has never hidden or downplayed although he hasn't yet found the courage to tell her about David (Eddie Castrodad), the gay 15-year-old who lives with him and will soon be his adopted son. Tensions begin rising as soon as Ma arrives for a visit, peaking when they visit the family's cemetery plot and she realizes that Alan is buried there alongside her late husband. This is far and away the most emotionally powerful part of the film, allowing both Arnold and his mother to make impassioned statements of how and why they view life, love, and death in such different and deeply felt ways. Although much of Torch Song Trilogy is played for laughs, even the funniest bits usually have undercurrents of bitterness and anger, and those qualities come into the foreground in the final scenes, where it becomes clear that Ma is no less gifted than Arnold when it comes to sarcasm, zingers, and flashes of truly savage wit.
In adapting Torch Song Trilogy to the screen, Fierstein has pared down, toned down, and slightly dumbed down the original material. The movie is about half the length of the play, and while the play doesn't have much in the way of onstage sex, there's even less sexual activity in the film, leaving it mostly to the imagination. The portion that's somewhat dumbed down is in the middle, where the play has long dialogue passages arranged in the structure of a musical fugue, labeling the different sections (subject, stretto, and so on) with slides projected on the backdrop. The movie shortens the fugally organized dialogue and dispenses with the labels; this doesn't amount to much of a loss, although it makes the vaguely disparaging assumption that movie audiences would automatically reject a device that theater audiences took in stride.
Fierstein gives a stunning performance in a role that precisely suits his acting talents, and Bancroft is brilliant as Arnold's longsuffering, self-absorbed mother. Broderick is excellent as Alan - interestingly, he played young David in the original stage production - and Young is a standout in the supporting cast. The narrative of Torch Song Trilogy ends in 1980, just before the AIDS epidemic started, so its portrait of gay life in America doesn't include that crisis, although the 1988 movie is dedicated to all the people fighting to defeat it. Fierstein has stayed active in films but has achieved more success in the theater world. After the triumph of Torch Song Trilogy, his script for the Broadway version of La Cage aux Folles won a Drama Desk Award and Tony nomination in 1984; his portrayal of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray won multiple prizes in 2003; and subsequent ventures have accrued additional honors. All this notwithstanding, it's likely that Torch Song Trilogy will endure as the signature achievement he was born to create.
Director: Paul Bogart
Producer: Howard Gottfried
Screenplay: Harvey Fierstein, based on his play
Cinematographer: Mikael Salomon
Film Editing: Nicholas C. Smith
Art Direction: Marcie Dale and Okowita
Music: Peter Matz
With: Anne Bancroft (Ma Beckoff), Matthew Broderick (Alan Simon), Harvey Fierstein (Arnold Beckoff), Brian Kerwin (Ed Reese), Karen Young (Laurel), Eddie Castrodad (David), Ken Page (Murray), Charles Pierce (Bertha Venation), Axel Vera (Marina Del Rey)
Color-121m.
by David Sterritt
