It’s crazy, says Michael Urie as Arnold, that “after all these years I’m still trying to justify my life.” Arnold means his life as a gay man, and though he is talking specifically to his mother (Mercedes Ruehl), the comment lands with force in Torch Song, the Off-Broadway revival of the 1982 Broadway play that launched Harvey Fierstein’s mainstream career as both playwright and performer.

It would be terrific to report that the issues Fierstein wove into his Tony winning comedy about Arnold Beckoff’s life and loves make the play seem dated 35 years later…But the search for love and acceptance and self-acceptance remains as fresh as a wound….What does feel dated, though, is a steady beat of jokes as if set to the metronome of an old-fashioned Broadway comedy…Torch Song can probably best be appreciated, even celebrated, as a piece of living gay history.

Click on any photograph by Joan Marcus to see it enlarged

Roxanna Hope Radja, Ward Horton, Michael Urie and Michael Rosen

War Horton, Jack DiFalco, Michael Urie, Mercedes Ruehl

Mercedes Ruehl and Michael Urie

Michael Urie, Jack DeFalco, Ward Horton

Mercedes Ruehl as Ma

Estelle Getty as Ma and Fierstein in the Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy

The 1988 film Torch Song Trilogy with Harvey Fierstein as Arnold, and Matthew Broderick as Alan, Arnold’s lover (Broderick originally portrayed David, Arnold’s adopted son, in the production Off-Broadway)

Harvey Fierstein

Full review on DC Theatre Scene