Beyond categories

A classic Torch Song

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Torch Song Trilogy plays at MainePlay Productions, in Portland, through April 28. Call (207) 771-5611.

JAMES HERRERA: playing Arnold Beckoff with a deep sarcasm.

It is much easier to talk about any work of art — a poem, a painting, a play — if you can put it in a category. Generations of PhDs have spent their time arguing about what makes a work Beat or New York School or rooted in Identity Politics. Generations of kids hanging around the street corners and malls of America have spent their afternoons arguing about what separates trip hop from dancehall or punk metal from straight hardcore or gangsta rap (ok, I realize I’m dating myself here) from new jack swing.

So the fact that the story of Torch Song Trilogy focuses on the life of a female impersonator named Arnold — that the prominent album covers in his dressing room include old school Liberace and Show Girl with Carol Channing — mean that this play, like the movie it was made into, is “gay.” That’s not all bad — the play does portray many aspects of being gay in this country. But the label our culture provides also puts Torch Song into a tiny box with a few other gay-themed dramas that have poked their heads out into the mainstream, like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or Angels in America, and that’s too bad because it means a lot of people won’t think it’s for them.

In any case, MainePlay Productions’ artistic director Michael Tobin deserves credit for realizing that Torch Song, which was originally written by Harvey Fierstein back in the ’70s, is still relevant today. One of the reasons it still works is the humor, and James Herrera delivers Arnold Beckoff’s one liners and self-deprecating riffs in a way that makes it apparent that his sarcasm comes from someplace deep. In a robe and bunny slippers in the first scene, Arnold tells the audience that his perfect lover was “tall, handsome, rich . . . and deaf.”

In this way, Fierstein’s script deftly begins with humor and builds in the pathos slowly in each of the three acts of Torch Song. As the play evolves, Arnold’s wit becomes more and more affecting because the audience understands more and more what’s underneath it.

Michael Tobin’s staging further emphasizes the audience’s intimacy with Arnold. With the first row only a few feet from his dressing room and on the same level, you become a part of his first fight with his new love, Ed (Peter E. Brown). You see, up close, Arnold’s refusal to give up after he loses Ed to a woman. To his mirror, he quips, “I’m aging about as well as a beach party movie,” before admitting that perhaps what drew him to Ed was the drama and the license to be a “tragic torch singer” it gives him. In between each scene, Betty Gravelle as Lady Blues seems to embody this torch singer by delivering old love songs like “I Get a Kick out of You,” a capella.

This production is not without flaws, but they are minor ones. David (Dan Powers), Arnold’s foster son who enters the story in the third act, does a nice job of portraying a young teenager, but his five o’clock shadow needs a touch up so as not to give away the actor’s true age. The initial meeting of Ed and Arnold in a club happens very quickly — it is one place where the play, written during the sexual revolution and before the era of AIDS, feels dated. However, without giving away too much, some of the other events in the story — like Ed’s need to repress his bisexuality in front of his family and what’s revealed about the death of Arnold’s partner Alan (David Timm)– just make you wish they felt dated.

In the second and third acts, Ed’s wife Laurel, played by Jessica Chaples-Graham, and Mrs. Beckoff, played by Maureen Tannian Butler, assure that the playwright cannot be accused of only writing strong, sympathetic male characters. Chaples-Graham ably portrays Laurel’s desire to accept Ed for who he is while also being painfully unable to satisfy him. In her first few lines, Mrs. Beckoff’s acrid speech proves she is Arnold’s mother — referring to why none of the men would give up their seats on the train, she says, “Women’s lib has given me varicose veins.” Butler uses the caustic humor to portray both her character’s tender love for her son and total rejection of his homosexuality.

Yes, Torch Song Trilogy is a play that has a gay man as its central figure. But Arnold Beckoff’s refusal to hide from the pain of his struggles with family, loved ones, and loss makes him as tragic and heroic a figure as any. He deserves a place next to Willy Loman and Walter Lee Younger in the history of American drama. And as with any classic drama, Torch Song Trilogy does not provide a quick fix: it ends with some hope but also with Arnold alone on the stage, listening to a love song.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.