Toto Too Triumphs with Torch Song Trilogy

Poster photo by Maria Vartanova

Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein. Directed by Sarah Hearn.
Performed at the University of Ottawa, Academic Hall.

Ottawa’s new theatre season has received a stellar launching thanks to TotoToo’s production of Harvey Fierstein’s contemporary classic, Torch Song Trilogy. Here’s decisive evidence of its quality. This account of a young New York drag queen’s life journey through a period of turbulence, both personal and societal, occupies three separate plays, each lasting more than an hour. This adds up to a total running time, including two intermissions, of more than four hours. This means it’s longer than Hamlet, longer than Gone With The Wind, but shorter than The Ring Cycle. So yes, it is terribly long. But what’s important here is that Sarah Hearn’s outstanding production, so seamless in its blending of humour and pathos, ensures that the time flies by.

The show is both entertaining and provocative, and it features exceptional performances. But the other night, it attracted only a hand-full of patrons to a performance at Academic Hall. This is a disgrace. It should be selling out.

It’s hard to believe that this is the first Ottawa production of an autobiographical piece that has acquired legendary status since its Tony Award-winning Broadway premiere 35 years ago. Back then, Harvey Fierstein himself took on the central role of Arnold Beckoff, this middle-class Jewish boy who must deal with both the joys and travails of being gay. Torch Song Trilogy went on to win the coveted Tony Award and run for more than 1200 performance.

It’s commercial success was significant. Yes, it focussed on the gay culture of the day, including its dubious subterranean aspects: this Ottawa revival does not flinch in the staging of the controversial scene which sees Arnold, hungering for some kind of relationship, receiving anonymous sex in the murkiness of a Greenwich Village gay bar. But ultimately, Torch Song Trilogy is a life-affirming piece of drama — self-searching but also warm-hearted — and these qualities are celebrated in TotoToo’s production. They are the same qualities that ensured the success of that initial New York run. This is a play that defies categorization as some sort of specialized ghetto entertainment. Its concerns are universal, and throughout its history, it has consistently drawn in wider audiences. It deserves this kind of acceptance in Ottawa.

 

The show’s success, of course, depends on the portrayal of Arnold, and a young actor named Sam Dietrich proves an exciting find. If we are able to share his personal odyssey so easily, it is because of a sensitive, detailed portrait of someone who is at peace with his own life style but who, as much as anyone else, yearns not just for acceptance but for a genuine, meaningful relationship that goes beyond the physical. There’s vulnerability here — but there’s also tenacity, fortitude and a growing wisdom and serenity that ultimately rescue him from total loss and despair.

We get similar solid work from the others who occupy his world. There’s Kurt Shantz, excellent as Ed, the bisexual teacher who enters into a relationship with Arnold, and from Joey McDougall, touching as the wife fumblingly trying to come to terms with her husband’s fractured loyalties. There’s an appropriately nervy performance from William Verreault Milner as Arnold’s demanding and ultimately doomed young lover. There’s fresh and engaging work from Ryan Van Buskirk as David, the rejected gay kid that Arnold has saved from a sordid life on the streets.

There’s a knock-out performance from Cathy Nobleman as the adoring mother who understands Arnold all too well but still can’t come to terms with his sexuality. Her presence sparks the most affecting scene in the evening — a powerfully acted confrontation between mother and son, searing the emotions as it claws its way to some sort of reconciliation, but also defying the kind of easy closure that a less honest piece might countenance.

Sally McIntyre’s sets are simple but functional — although there’s one door that irritates, allowing us to see certain characters when we shouldn’t. Glynis Ellens responds admirably to the costuming needs of this play — right down to Arnold’s fuzzy pink bunny slippers. The lighting of Barry Sims is outstanding. And a velvet-voiced Tracy Gagnon makes her own important contribution to mood as a torch singer during the first act.

The horrors of the Aids crisis had yet to ravage gay culture when Torch Song Trilogy premiered. So yes, in some ways it is dated. But that it’s now a period piece does not diminish its value. The people at TotoToo certainly prove that.

Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein
A TotoToo production
Academic Hall, University of Ottawa, to Sept. 17.

Tickets: www.TotoToo.ca

Director: Sarah Hearn
Stage Manager: Josh Kemp
Sets: Sally McIntyre
Costumes: Glynis Ellens
Lighting: Barry Sims
Sound: Justin Ladelpha

Sam Dietrich: Arnold Beckoff
Tracy Gagnon: Lady Blues
Joey McDougall: Laurel
William Verrault Milner: Alan
Cathy Nobleman: Ma Beckoff
Kurt Shantz: Ed
Ryan Van Buskirk: David