The attitude of Ronald Reagan's administration toward gays was neglectful at best. was in the second year of a hostile administration. And Mart's reality is different from mine,' he says.īut some plays have politics thrust upon them. 'I don't think Boys in the Band was political at all. Fierstein argues that those other two plays are not really political, especially Mart Crowley's Boys in the Band. Torch Song never was as political as Angels or even Boys. Yet somehow the play survived and is shorter. This got Fierstein worried, 'I was like 'Moisés, they're going to fall in love with lines and want them put back in.'' To help the cast with their character, director Moisés Kaufman wanted the cast to read the full trilogy. That was five to one.' This time it got complicated. 'I made a deal with the original cast: For every line I cut of theirs, I cut one of mine. And now that a lot of ground has been broken, it is comfort food for the theatergoer's soul.įierstein says that cutting lines are never easy but it had to be done, even when Trilogy was four hours long.

Torch Song is still three related one-acts, but it's down to a relatively bite-sized two hours and 45 minutes. This has been a banner year for iconic, groundbreaking gay-themed plays on Broadway: Angels in America and The Boys in the Band received stellar revivals in the spring, and now Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song makes it a trifecta. It had five characters, and the closest it got to the spectacle was Fierstein. Trilogy was composed of three related one-act plays on the life of Arnold Beckoff, a drag queen looking for love. Even Trilogy tried to get in on the action a little: Its subtitle was The Life and Adventures of Arnold Beckoff, and it clocked in at about four hours. Tickets to Nickelby cost a then-exorbitant $100 the show had over a hundred characters, and it ran eight hours.

When Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein debuted off-Broadway in 1982, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby, which had opened in late 1981, was all the rage and size mattered.

Torchlight trilogy