On Tidy Endings by Harvey Fierstein

Analysis On Tidy Endings

Actor/drag queen Harvey Fierstein began writing plays at age 20 so as to create roles for himself. His first attempt concerned his efforts to clean Harry Koutoukas's apartment, a horrifying task which he undertook so that playwright would write a script for him. Instead, Fierstein wrote about the housecleaning experience in a musical—In Search of the Cobra Jewels, complete with a chorus of cockroaches—in which both writers appeared as themselves. Because Fierstein wanted to play a whore, he wrote Freaky Pussy, whose seven cross-dressing hookers live in a subway men's room. Then, longing to sing Tosca, he wrote Flatbush Tosca. His next, though still unproduced, play, Cannibals, anticipates a plot element in La Cage aux Folles, as two kids run off and bring shame on their tribe because they want to be straight (Leo, pp.100-104).

The next year Fierstein began writing his Tony award-winning role, Arnold Beckoff (i.e. "beckon" versus "back off"), in the first of the Torch Song Trilogy plays, The International Stud, and the plump pixie, wit, political activist, and outspoken critic of a heterosexist society finally began attracting the attention of audiences beyond the confines of the experimental off-off-Broadway La Mama. In dialogue at once droll, direct, and distressing ("A thing of beauty is a joy till sunrise"), Arnold compulsively carries the torch for bisexual Ed; his winning that stud degrades him nearly as much as does the initial pursuit and the eventual loss. Yet he accompanies each act of dependence, each self-destructive kvetch with which he pushes Ed away from him, with a laconic quip which lets us know that Arnold understands what he's doing. Like the torch singer who capitalizes on her pain with "music to be miserable by," Arnold often allows his vulnerability to careen crazily into masochistic self-pity.

Fierstein suits his form to his content by employing presentational styles in the first two plays. Thus Arnold's egocentricity finds expression when he gazes into a mirror during the opening of The International Stud, which also isolates Arnold and Ed in a series of self-absorbed monologues; although this is a two-character play (plus torch singer), they appear together only in the last scene, after Fierstein creates the effect of a backroom orgy by employing Arnold alone (Andrea, pp. 82-83). Fugue in a Nursery picks up Arnold and ex-lover Ed a year after the end of their affair, as Arnold and his new flame Alan visit Ed and the "other woman" Laurel at Ed's summer home. Only slightly matured out of pure narcissism, the four, in contrapuntal scenes played upon a giant bed, engage in frequently rearranged pairings with occasionally intersecting dialogue. They're sophisticated enough to suit the fugal accompaniment (by string quartet) and plot construction, but sufficiently infantile for Arnold's bedroom to be termed "the nursery."

Critics were generally enthusiastic about La Cage aux Folles, although Frank Rich, writing in The New York Times (22 August 1983), found it merely a "splashy entertainment" that "hums along in its unabashedly conventional ...