He is effeminate, the audience meet him as he’s dressing in drag, and he appropriates a sense of fatalism from the songs he performs. From appearances, Arnold fulfills a narrow stereotype of gay men.
From Arnold’s first utterances, it’s apparent that he’s Fierstein’s device to dismantle preconceived ideas on gay identity. Each act of Torch Song Trilogy is its own contained play, premiering at different times, yet seamlessly melding.Īct one, “International Stud”, named after a gay bar in Greenwich Village, beings with Arnold’s soliloquy explaining his cynicism towards love and romance. The 2018 edition published by Ballantine Books features a truncated version Fierstein rewrote for a 2017 revival. This is evident in “Fugue in a Nursery”, where the four characters’ dialogue is circular and interwoven, thereby evoking a musical fugue’s characteristic. Torch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays divided into distinct acts, “International Stud”, “Fugue in a Nursery”, and “Widows and Children First!” From the production notes, it’s apparent that Fierstein’s use of prop minimalism and innovative lighting rendered the dialogue as the focal point. Throughout, readers contend with Arnold’s growth in a society determined to remain stagnant. Torch Song Trilogy is a progressive and contemplative meditation on gay identity that was radical for the ’70s and remains dire for the contemporary moment. As the drama progresses, Fierstein unpacks major social and political issues including debunking stereotypes of gay men or complicating normative conceptions of marriage and monogamy. He works as a drag queen torch singer but feels disconnected, lonely, and jaded. Hence, Harvey Fierstein‘s Torch Song Trilogy.The plot centers on Arnold Beckoff, a gay man living in late ’70-era New York. A central purpose of popular culture is to project narratives that question and subvert the status quo.
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