But this is 1979, after all, and Arnold wants to show how up-to-date and au courant he can be. Ed does, but he happens to have a nice, steady girlfriend named Laurel (nice, steady Roxana Hope Radja), which complicates things. Urie has fun in these backroom bar scenes, especially when Arnold is taken in hand by person or persons unknown.
Lucky for him, he meets a sweetheart of a guy named Ed (a wonderfully honest performance from Ward Horton) at a gay bar notorious for its luridly lighted (by David Lander) backroom. A success as a drag performer (handsomely costumed by Clint Ramos) known as Virginia Ham, but shy and awkward at matters of the heart, Arnold is desperate for true love and all its trappings - marriage, kids, hot sex - but doesn’t know how to find it. Even more grating is Urie’s strained attempt to imitate the writer’s distinctive voice, which sounds something like a frog being scrambled in an eggbeater.Īrnold’s story is as sweet as ever. It seems strange, for instance, that both playwright and the director should retain certain references that are pure Harvey Fierstein, like the chubby jokes and the broad stage gestures that defined his quirky charm, but hardly apply to the trim new star. Likewise, Daisy Boulton as his wife Laurel gives an intelligent but slightly distant performance.At more than an hour less than its original four-hour run time, the trimmed-down show has kept its basic storyline but lost some of its grace notes. He makes a strong entrance with an endearing and gauche monologue but lacks real chemistry with Needham for the rest of the play. Both burst off the stage with impressive vibrancy and a mature sensitivity for the subject matter.ĭino Fetscher as Arnold's repressed and tortured long-term bisexual love interests gives a committed performance but I never quite connected with who he was or what he was going through. There is strong support from two absolute beginners – Rish Shah as Arnold's beautiful and sweet young boyfriend Alan in the central section and Jay Lycurgo as the teenage boy he is seeking to adopt in the final part. The play lives or dies by this role and Needham takes more time than Fierstein's original full-frontal attack, but he won me over and had me weeping for his pain and happiness by the end.
The tale of a Jewish drag queen who talks like a Brooklyn stevedore but secretly yearns for love and family, is as specific as it is universal.įierstein looms large, but Matthew Needham makes Arnold a little less abrasive and a little more melancholy as he slowly lets us under Arnold's defences.
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