Torch Song Trilogy.

We watched Torch Song Trilogy the other night. I hadn’t seen it, and I missed the original stage production (the first of the trilogy ran the fall I moved to New York, I think). I saw the revision/revival at 2nd Stage a few years ago with Michael Urie, which was wonderful.

Harvey Fierstein’s performance is epic. It’s easy to see why it was so acclaimed at the time. Reviews and chit-chat about the play often said that it showed the world that homosexuals wanted the same things as straight people: to be loved, to have someone to take care of, a family. That a gay story could be a universal story, etc. And I think lots of gay people loved it, but there was also a big faction that called it conservative, reactionary, for glorifying the nuclear family. In the 1980s, gay activists’ only interest in marriage was in blowing it up. It’s kind of shocking to look back and see how gay marriage was not at all a thing until it suddenly was, and then how quickly it became the only thing.

But the world Fierstein imagined in Torch Song Trilogy feels radical now: his so-called reactionary nuclear family consists of two parents, one a gay man, one bisexual, who are ex-lovers, and a gay teenager they’ve adopted and are raising as their son. That arrangement can’t but seem radical now that the preferred model is actual same-sex marriage, modeled on straight marriage. A setup like that would be not only outre but would arouse “groomer” accusations from straight people and I’m pretty sure gay people, too.

I’m always reading that the big shift in Americans’ approval of gay marriage shows that things are better for gay people, or that straight people are more open-minded, more liberal than they were about gay people, but what that shift really means is a narrowing of possibilities for us.

You should watch it, it’s very good, touching, hilarious, and Fierstein is a wonder. But good luck finding it. It’s not streaming anywhere, you might find a used VHS copy on eBay, I got it from the library but had to wait over a year for someone to return what I guess is their only copy. I always laugh when people talk about how we live in an age where “you can watch anything you want any time.” An acclaimed, historically important indie film, essentially unavailable.