With his breakthrough role of Arnold Beckoff in his

self-penned Torch Song Trilogy, Harvey Fierstein established a stage

persona that was proudly gay and definitely Jewish. Since then, his Broadway

roles have seen him stretching a bit in one direction or another. In Hairspray,

he played a character who was presumably Jewish, but heterosexual – though that

character happened to be a woman. And in Fiddler on the Roof, he played

Tevye, who's most certainly Jewish, but certainly not gay. (He has five

daughters!)

Now, he has written (or rewritten) for himself the role of

an Irish, gay uncle in the new musical A Catered Affair, which boasts

direction by John Doyle, a book by Fierstein, and a score by the super-talented

John Bucchino. The narrative crux of the musical, and the 1956 film on which it

was based, is whether or not a lower-middle-class Bronx

family will make the sacrifices necessary to give their affianced daughter an

elaborate wedding, even though the girl has made it clear that she doesn't want

one.

But in the movie, the equivalent character to Fierstein's — played by

Barry Fitzgerald — is an old drunk rather than a homosexual.

Set to open at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 17, A

Catered Affair also stars Faith Prince and Tom Wopat as Aggie and Tom

Hurley, Leslie Kritzer as their daughter and Matt Cavenaugh as her intended.

In

its pre-Broadway run at the Old Globe in San Diego,

the production was very well reviewed by the critics — with the notable

exception of Charles McNulty of the Los

Angeles Times, who panned the show in

general and criticized Fierstein for playing Uncle Winston as a contemporary

gay man.

This led to Fierstein going after McNulty on his blog and in emails to

friends and colleagues. But our Harvey was in a

great mood when I spoke with him at an A

Catered Affair press event that was recently held at Kleinfeld, the

famous bridal shop in Manhattan.

Fierstein and the cast of A Catered Affair

AfterElton: Harvey,

this interview is for AfterElton.com. So I'd like to focus on the gay aspect of

the show, even though I realize that's not primarily what it's about.

Harvey Fierstein: Well, in a funny

way, it is. I've been looking at it from today's perspective. Why do gay men

want gay marriage? What you see in this show is a character who's kind of

closeted. He has a boyfriend, but he doesn't live with him. His boyfriend

actually accuses him of living on his sister's couch to avoid personal

entanglements.

There was something we got away with saying in the '50s, and

even in the '60s, when we talked about being gay: “Heterosexuals have

relationships, but gay men have great sex.” Well, that was never really true.

Gay men have always had relationships; we just never had permission to. But,

living as part of a family, why wouldn't you want what the rest of your family

has?

AE: The film version of A Catered Affair is a bit

problematic, yet there's something very special about it.

HF: I've always loved

it, though I never thought it was a perfect movie by any stretch of the

imagination. I don't believe in adapting something that's already great and

just putting it on the stage. What's the point? Go rent the movie! But I loved

the characters, and I saw the opportunity to do something else with them.

There's a turning point in the show: We have a song called “Coney

Island,” where I say to my sister Aggie, “Remember when we were kids and I took

you to Coney Island and made you get on the

roller coaster? From the moment we got on, you covered your eyes. At the end of

the ride, you looked so sad, because you paid your money, you took the ride,

but you missed the view. So, come on. We're halfway through another ride. Open

your eyes!”

AE: How explicit is the show about your character Winston's sexuality?

HF: Well, we say that

he's going off to “keep house” with his boyfriend. That's how we put it in 1953

terms. For a gay man to do that in those days was absolutely frightening. But

it's no less frightening for Aggie that her daughter is moving out and she now

has to see if she can have a real relationship with her husband of 25 years. So

many of us do the same thing; we sort of avoid our own lives.

AE: Tell me about your adaptation of the film.

HF: The Barry

Fitzgerald character is a bachelor uncle who's really there for comic relief.

He gets married just to get out of the house. I thought, “There's no reason for

us to do that story.” But he has some great lines in the movie. At one point,

he's talking with the woman he goes off with at the end, and he says, “I lived

with my mother till she died, then I moved in with my sister Mary. She was a

striking girl – around 200 pounds. Died laughing with a beer in her hand, when

I was telling her my story of the missionary and the cannibals.”

I love that,

but I couldn't find a place for it in the show. To me, the point is that this

man has always lived with someone.

AE: The Hurley family is supposedly Irish. Neither Bette Davis nor

Ernest Borgnine come across as Irish in the movie, but it doesn't seem to

matter much.

HF: A Catered

Affair started as a teleplay, with Thelma Ritter in the lead role. Paddy

Chayefsky's son told me that his father wanted to write a teleplay for each of

the ethnic groups in his neighborhood, so he wrote Marty for the

Italians, A Catered Affair for the Irish, and then he wrote a German one

and a Jewish one. It's the Bronx in 1953, and

the Hurleys are Irish, but this story could be about a black family or a Jewish

family or a Puerto Rican family.

AE: Come to think of it, “family” has been a major theme

of your work through the years, going all the way back to Torch Song Trilogy

— especially the third part, “Widows and Children First!”

HF: Yes, and I was

criticized for it. People like Edmund White would say, “Harvey's just turning us into heterosexuals.

What gay person would ever want a kid?” Well, look at us now! I used to get in

trouble because I would call San Francisco the gay Disneyland;

it seemed like all people were doing was having sex and making notches on the

bed.

But there's more to life than a blowjob. You've got to grow up at some

point. This show, this story allowed me to say, “Here's a gay character from

the past who lives through the craziness and finds the courage to go and have a

relationship.”

The whole show is presented as his memory; it begins as he's

moving in with his boyfriend. He's leaving his sister's house; he's got his

suitcase. As he's walking down the street, he turns and looks back, and then we

see the show in his mind. We see how he got to this point. So the show is not all gay, but in a way, that's really what it's about.

AE: What is it about the film that most affected you?

HF: What I found in

the story was ordinary people — the kind of people who I grew up with — who

are just trying to put food on the table. That's basically what life is about

for them. Then something momentous happens, and they have to stop and think,

“How did I end up here? What was it I wanted that brought me here, and what do

I do with the rest of my life?”

All of the characters in this story have hit

that moment. Tom, the father, has this dream [of getting his own cab]. He's

working hard to get there, and he's almost there. Aggie, the mother, has put

her dreams aside for all of her life, but now she suddenly sees a chance to

live them through her daughter. And Jane, the daughter, has been treated in

such a way that she has never allowed herself to dream.

There's such humanity

in the characters Chayefsky wrote. And the screenplay for the film version was

written by somebody you may have heard of: Gore Vidal. There's a very good

pedigree here.

AE: What made you want to adapt the work of Chayefsky and Vidal for the

musical stage?

HF: To me, the

theater is a temple. It's the only god I have. We all enter this dark room

together, in an act of faith. If somebody on stage says, “Well, it's just

beautiful here in Budapest,” the audience is

willing to say, “Okay, we're in Budapest!”

Movies and television can't do that; you have to show Budapest. It only happens in the theater.

The question was, who the hell do you get to write a score

that's human enough for a story like this? My friend Julie Halston gave me an

album of John Bucchino's work, and I was amazed. There's nothing like his music

and lyrics. In three minutes, he can create an entire world, tell an entire

life story.

I approached him, and he told me, “You know, I really don't like

theater.” He hates me saying that! But he was willing to take the journey with

me. We wrote the show together, and it's been just a trip ever since then. The

show has attracted exactly who we wanted to bring it to this point. I can't

wait for everyone to see it.