Subject: "Unlikely Lovers" Has Gay Quartette
Date: Published: 5/6/92 (71 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    LEISURE & ARTS -- Theater:
    End of Big Broadway Season
    ----
    By Edwin Wilson

    New York -- Two men and two women join voices in a quartet
 -- a tender love song, soft and romantic, revealing their
 innermost feelings.  This sounds like the usual Broadway fare
 in a musical, right?  Wrong, because in this case the two men
 are homosexuals and the women are lesbians, and they are
 singing "Unlikely Lovers," with the men proclaiming their
 love for each other and the women theirs.
    The number is one of the high points of "Falsettos," the
 new musical at the John Golden Theatre.  Actually "Falsettos"
 is not exactly new, but a pair of older musicals in a new
 package.  William Finn wrote the music and lyrics for "The
 March of the Falsettos," a one-act musical first produced in
 1981.  It's about Marvin (Michael Rupert), a man married to
 Trina (Barbara Walsh) with a son Jason (Jonathan Kaplan).
 Marvin falls in love with Whizzer (Stephen Bogardus), leaves
 Trina, and shortly thereafter, Trina marries Marvin's
 psychiatrist Mendel (Chip Zien).
    The show was originally mounted off-Broadway, as was a
 sequel in the summer of 1990 called "Falsettoland."  This
 later work, also a one-act musical, takes place two years
 after the first.  This time around Whizzer contracts AIDS,
 though in 1981, the year in which the play is set, the
 disease had no name.  In addition to the other family members,
 the second play has a lesbian couple:  a doctor named
 Charlotte and her companion (played by Heather MacRae and
 Carolee Carmello, respectively).  Both short musicals are
 being directed by James Lapine in the combined version that
 has just opened at the John Golden Theatre.  Mr. Lapine was
 the original director of both.
    In some quarters "Falsettos" has been hailed as a
 breakthrough musical.  It is hardly that.  The notion of a man
 wanting to have it all as Marvin does -- to have his lover
 and still hold on to his old family, especially his son -- is
 a familiar theme, as is the devastating effect of AIDS, both
 on the victim and on those close to him.  What does set the
 work apart is the notable talent of Mr. Finn in crafting both
 music and lyrics, and in the original way in which he and Mr. 
 Lapine have told the story.
    First, there is the humor.  Mr. Finn's wit, evident
 throughout, begins with the first number:  the men animatedly
 singing "Four Jews in a Room Bitching."  There is another
 hilarious song in Act Two:  people at a baseball game
 explaining that they are watching "Jewish men who can't play
 baseball play baseball."  Even the homosexuality is often
 treated humorously.  In one number young Jason comes downstage
 and sings to the audience (with a straight face), "My father
 is a homo."
    The music, too, is fresh and imaginative.  The tunes are
 hummable, the harmonies appealing and Mr. Finn writes in a
 variety of styles.  He knows how to underscore irony, or point
 up the emotion in a scene.  Mr. Lapine in his staging
 contributes his own brand of inventiveness.  The action
 unfolds on a bare stage with characters wheeling doors,
 tables and chairs onto the scene as needed.  The cast, several
 of whom are reprising their roles from the off-Broadway
 productions, is superior, especially the men.  That the women
 come off less well may be due in part to the fact that their
 roles are not as well-rounded.

[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.]