At this moment in time, how good you find “Torch Song Trilogy” to be is less important than that it’s being staged at all.
Theatre Group, Denver’s only gay theater company, is playing for its life.
The future of this embattled, 36-year-old troupe could well ride on the extent to which the theater community – gay and straight – comes out to support this massive undertaking.
“Torch Song Trilogy” isn’t a particularly earth-shattering effort, but it’s proof enough Theatre Group deserves to live another day.
This is the first production since Shelly Bordas assumed control from longtime executive director Steven Tangedal, who managed to keep the company afloat through lean recent years. But he also lost its longtime home at Theatre On Broadway, alienating audiences and actors through an intermittent succession of mostly trashy titles. Substantive efforts like 2005’s “Southern Baptist Sissies” have been too few and far between.
“Torch Song Trilogy” marks a return to the kind of meaningful gay-themed content of the company’s glory days, like “Never the Sinner,” “Shakespeare’s R&J,” “The Laramie Project,” “Gross Indecency” and “Cabaret.”
“Torch Song” is Harvey Fierstein’s semi-autobiographical, sentimental and comic quest for love and family amid one of the most decadent and morally confusing periods in American history (1978-84). Arnold (Patrick Mann) is a quick-witted, Jewish drag queen with a heart as big as his bra size. He’s a fatalistic optimist who sings only torch songs – “music to be miserable by,” he calls it.
The three plays (each helmed by different directors) show us Arnold at distinct points in his life. In the first, he falls into a fated love with bisexual teacher Ed (Andy Anderson). A year later, Arnold and his model boyfriend Alan (Michael Stone) visit Ed and his progressive wife, Laurel (a fun Louise Warner), for a Coward-esque, sexually liberated weekend at their Pennsylvania farm.
In the third, and by far best, chapter (directed by James Kaiser), Arnold has settled into a domestic life as a single parent but still has combustible issues to resolve with his disapproving hurricane of a mother (Linda Suttle).
This staging isn’t well-cast at the top, and that’s no slight against Mann, a promising newcomer who gives his all playing Arnold in obviously difficult circumstances – like answering to a trio of directors. The problem is he’s half the man Fierstein is – literally. Yes, the character is named Arnold, but c’mon – he’s Harvey. In 1981, The New York Times’ reviewer histrionically asserted, “I cannot – and do not want to – imagine anyone else playing Arnold.”
There are multiple references to the character’s girth and raspy voice, neither of which Mann possess, so his Arnold comes across more like Mike Myers’ Linda Richman. None of which would matter much if the directors had simply excised lines referencing specific physical characteristics that are clearly incongruous to the actor, like his being an Amazon, or a “mountain woman.”
Mann’s not. But he is passionate and fully committed, making it easy to root for this endearingly needy, bitchy romantic who’s not particularly brave or heroic. He’s just a sweet guy learning the hard way to ask for what he wants and not settle for anything less.
But Mann’s not getting enough truth or torment back from Anderson’s Ed, the enduring and magnetizing love of his life, and that keeps Mann from reaching the emotional depths of his own role.
The real jewels here can be found in smaller roles, notably Suttle as Arnold’s combustible mother, and a disarmingly natural high-schooler named Cameron Varner as the gay teen Arnold is determined to rescue from the exile of the New York foster-care system. Knockout torch singer Erin Schneider also offers smoldering, scene-changing excerpts such as “My Funny Valentine.”
The play builds nicely to an uncliched cauldron between Arnold and his mother in which the two come face to face, in essence, with angry, mirrored images of one another.
Audiences should know there is intermittently blatant sexual content (sex acts from back-room bars to bedrooms). But Arnold’s gayness is almost incidental in this surprisingly universal tale about one man’s – any man’s – struggle for love with someone who can never fully love him back.
At more than three hours, (hey, it was four in New York), “Torch Song Trilogy” is a lot to take in one sitting, and ultimately proves too big for Theatre Group to fully pull off right now. But the greater good here is its own audacious fight for survival, and that alone makes this play time well spent.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Torch Song Trilogy”
DRAMA | Presented by Theatre Group | Written by Harvey Fierstein | Directed by CJ Hosier, Doug Rosen and James Kaiser | Starring Patrick Mann and Andy Anderson | At the Phoenix Theatre, 1124 Santa Fe Drive | THROUGH OCT. 6 | 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, plus Sept. 17 | 3 hours, 10 minutes | $12-$20 | 303-777-3292 or | Note: Sexual situations, nudity
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“PRELUDE TO A KISS” In Craig Lucas’ romantic comedy, ordinary guy Peter falls in love with Rita. Theirs appears to be the perfect love story until an uninvited guest appears at the wedding and plants a kiss on the bride. Stars Chris Bleau and Courtney Hayes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 16 at Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Ave., Golden. $18-$20 (303-935-3044 or ).
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RUNNING LINES WITH … CHAD SCOTT AND SALLY MYERS: The husband-and-wife team behind Grand Lake’s remarkable Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre talk with Denver Post theater critic John Moore about their season, which continues through Sept. 22 with the Frank Sinatra tribute, “My Way.” Listen .
