Simon Collins reviews Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein, the first production at a new theatre, The Turbine, opened as part of the regeneration development around the old Battersea Power Station...
OUR VERDICT
On first acquaintance, the characters in Harvey Fierstein’s rewrite of his famous Torch Song Trilogy are not much different from those in numerous other wisecracking vaudeville acts and American TV sitcoms. “You have a sexy voice. Is it natural or do you have a cold?” From the Marx Brothers through I Love Lucy, MASH, Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, to Modern Family and Reno 911 character quirks and the minor embarrassments of colourful personalities yield ample scope for smart, cutting remarks and endless stichomythic, chitter-chattering, cotton candy humour. That’s entertainment.
The play opens on a half-naked, effeminate man wearing a woman’s pink, transparent dressing gown. No longer in the bloom of youth, he sighs, “My problem is being young and beautiful… ain’t no toads when the lights go down.”
The original Torch Song Trilogy began nearly half a century ago as separate plays in the 1970s and early 80s. When combined the running time was over four hours. In this new (2017) streamlined version Fierstein has cut it down to two and a half hours and two acts. The story concerns Arnold Beckoff, brilliantly played by Matthew Needham, an ageing drag queen, Virginia Ham, caught in a relationship triangle with a young man, Alan, and the super-handsome, athletic dreamboat Ed (Dino Fetscher) who loves Laurel – a woman.
In the second half, though the sharp one-liners continue, the tone drastically changes to that of a genuine drama of tangled characters, the comedy remaining only as a surface of hysteria over the pitiable emptiness of an ageing misfit, the existential tragedy of an alien. His stereotypical Jewish mother arrives bristling with brio from retirement in Florida to find him living with a gay 15-year-old whom he is parenting. In Bernice Stegers terrific, oppressive performance she cannot comprehend how Arnold can live this queer life, far outside her conventional boundaries, nor can she recognise her own passive-aggressive tyranny. Mother and son are irreconcilable. Both wounded, they hurt loudly: Greenwich Village is a world away from Noel Coward’s Norfolk.
Drew McOnie, the director, known mainly as a choreographer, has somehow drawn out wonderful performances from the cast, helped perhaps by the intimacy of the space in which the audience is close enough to touch the actors.
The Turbine is a small, bare-bricked theatre, seating 200, formed from the conversion of railway arches. Frequently, trains clatter and rumble overhead. For this play, set mostly in Arnold’s dowdy 1980s apartment, it is appropriately atmospheric; his kitchen could be near such noise. Whether this will distract from other sorts of plays is an open issue.
As is the strategy for a new theatre at this location. Paul Taylor-Mills, its creative director, has a difficult challenge in establishing an identity for the Turbine Theatre. Towering over the entire area between Vauxhall Bridge and Chelsea Bridge is the massive structure of the inert Battersea Power Station (large enough to comfortably fit both St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey inside) with its four iconic white chimneys on top. It needs some way of becoming the equivalent of the New Tate. There are no signs of that just yet. At present this is still one of the largest building sites in Europe and without a tube near. Circus Village West, so-called, has a piazza, a couple of bars, various eateries, a small cinema, a gym, the theatre, and several, soon to be many, modernist glass-cube office and gleaming luxury apartment complexes, similar to those in fifty other cities around the globe. The ethos is trans-national corporate.
Theatres prosper when they reflect and engage with a community. Among the locals, there will be thousands of office workers. It will be interesting to see how the dynamic Taylor-Mills, supported by Bill Kenwright, tries to coax them away from their screens to watch live performances. With Torch Song he has made a good start.
Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein until 13th October at The Turbine Theatre, Arches Lane, Circus West Village, SW11 8AB. Book here.