Subject: Theater: Trio of Domestic Tragedies 
Date: Published: 10/26/90 (36 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    LEISURE & ARTS -- Theater:
    Trio of Domestic Tragedies
    ----
    By Melanie Kirkpatrick

[70 lines irrelevant to AIDS were removed.  -- sysop]

    "Falsettoland" (Lucille Lortel Theater) is the third in a
 series of William Finn's operettas about homosexual life in a
 big city.  Marvin, who earlier left his wife and son for a man
 who later dumped him, is now reunited with his former lover.
 It's 1981 and Whizzer, the lover, has come down with a
 mysterious new disease.
    This is not the first play about AIDS, of course, but it
 is, regrettably, a rather trivial one.  Part of the problem
 may be that Mr. Finn is best at writing light songs.  The one
 about Jewish boys learning to play baseball is very cute, and
 there's also a gently ironic solo by Marvin -- "What more can
 I say?" -- about his fumbling relationship with Whizzer.  The
 serious songs are unsatisfactory -- even the humdrum titles
 convey their inadequacy to take on the tragedy of AIDS:
 "Something bad is happening," sings the doctor and "You gotta
 die sometime," croons Whizzer.  But part is also due to the
 self-absorption of the characters, particularly the
 angst-ridden Marvin and the fickle Whizzer.  Their love -- the
 subject of the first parts of the Falsetto trilogy -- isn't
 fully enough established here.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]