Matthew Diamond and James Lapine | Falsettos / 2017 [TV broadcast]

love redefined

by Douglas Messerli

 

William Finn (music), James Lapine (libretto), James Lapine (stage director), Matthew Diamond (film director) Falsettos / 2017 [TV broadcast]

 

William Finn and James Lapine’s musical Falsettos, made up of Finn’s two earlier musicals, March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990), was one of the earliest of Broadway works to speak up about two issues never before so openly discussed on the Broadway stage: the breakup of a conventional straight relationship when the male falls in love with another man and the earliest specters of AIDS. If, in fact, Finn had already perceived the issues in the first work that he brings up in the second installation, it might represent the very earliest of works, either on stage or cinema about AIDS. However, we have no evidence of that. And by 1990, the production in which the disease takes over Finn’s narrative, AIDS had been the focus of several brave and brilliant works of cinema, Nik Sheehan’s No Sad Songs (1985), Arthur J. Bressan’s Buddies (1985), John Erman’s TV film An Early Frost (1985), Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances (1986), Jerry Tartaglia’s A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M (1988), David Weissman’s Song of an Angel (1988), and in the year before Falsettoland, Norman René’s Longtime Companion (1989).  

    The very year after Falsettoland, you might say everything broke loose with the production of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

    My now husband Howard and I were “saved” by the fortuitous fact that we had been in a primarily monogamous relationship since way back in 1970, although even that carefully placed word “primarily” always made me highly apprehensive. But since by the early 1980s we had already been established as a couple in the highly accepting academic, art, and literary worlds, and were not visiting the nightly gay bars as I had been just a year before we met, we were, basically “inoculated” from the AIDS horror, with only a few friends and acquaintances, Roger Horwitz (d. 1986) and his lover Paul Monette (d. 1995), my Sun & Moon shipper Michael (whose doctor called him at my office to cruelly report over the telephone that had AIDS) and his lover Piero, a small sampling of what other gay men and women experienced through the long suffering and deaths of several dozens of friends.

    But even in our igloo of straight-world acceptance we well knew what was going on, that as the character in this version Finn’s work Dr. Charlotte (Tracie Thoms) describes in her terrifying prescient song “Something Bad Is Happening.” We knew, were afraid, and wanted to somehow help to ease the pain without, given that time in our lives in our mid 30s and early 40s, we remained outsiders to our own community. Works like Finn’s Falsettoland brought the news to those few who cared, which perhaps at the time—although in hindsight I feel a great deal of guilt and anger for not doing more—was all we were able to offer.

     Recently, I grew terribly furious at a lovely dinner party with dear friends, all straight, one of whom in the days of COVID, proclaimed that he has always imagined that he would never have to suffer the horrible days as his parents had with World War II and the horrific right-wing aftermath of Hollywood blacklisting of the 1950s. But now with COVID, he realized he had not been spared the mass destruction of human lives. I almost shouted at him for his blindness, but realized it would mean little to him as a straight man to remind that, as a matter of fact, as high as 44.1 million people had died of AIDS, so many of them gay or in countries where even when there were medicines available to help curtail the disease such treatments were unavailable. To date there a little more than 7 million deaths by COVID. Such comparisons are meaningless, obviously, since both have been international scourges which have killed masses of loving, beautiful human beings who might have contributed further to our world culture. But the fact that my friend, also Jewish—and Finn’s play is also very much a work focused on the Jewish-American experience—seemed to utterly have forgotten that he had himself been part of that world that AIDS devastated made to want to scream!

     The power of Finn’s remarkable work is that it brings everything together: a happily married family suddenly broken apart by the father’s discovery of his gay attraction to a man; the desolation of a family, leaving a wife almost in a nervous breakdown and a young son so confused that he’s terrified even of his own identity; let alone the second act introduction of a happy lesbian couple and the discovery that the man’s lover has AIDS, the play ending with his death—all embedded within a specifically Jewish cultural and religious context. If we were to step back for a moment to observe what has just been presented we might be amazed that this production was even mounted in a Broadway theater, let alone was able to sustain audiences for 487 performances in 1992-1993. That it went on to have several productions in Australia, and was revived by in a Lincoln Center production again on Broadway in 2016 for a limited run of 114 performances starring now such legendary theater icons such as Christian Borle (as Marvin, the gay father) and Andrew Rannells (as his gay lover Whizzer) is even more astounding. And the fact that Lincoln Center was able to film its produce it on PBS is almost mid-boggling. Clearly audiences of the day were able to accept and assimilate a conglomerate of issues that might surely challenge today’s highly politized and far less tolerate audiences. The very idea of a Jewish musical about a married man who discovers he’s gay and still wants both lover and family, and who all come together finally when the lover is sick and dies of AIDS seems today like a fluke of reality; today we hardly have a PBS left to produce it and Lincoln Center audiences have arguably come to prefer revivals of Oscar and Hammerstein and maybe, once in a while, a Stephen Sondheim fable. Finn’s popular opera—all lines being sung or spoken in rhyme—was pulled out of the daily headlines, in this version, even more startingly, presented with no realist sets, but just with interconnecting cubes that get repurposed to represent rooms, furniture, and communal spaces.

    I am clearly a member of the audience this work was created for: I cried throughout, laughed on cue, and found the often simplistic rhymes and tunes somewhat clever and emotionally profound. This is clearly not a musical opera you go home humming, and I challenge any viewer to actually quote me more than a couple of lyrics, yet we follow along as it presents the plot in a manner than only opera goers can appreciate.

   Finn gets away with it, in part, through a series of strange displacements. The father, Marvin, is after all, still in love with his ex-wife Trina (Stephanie J. Block) and clearly still desperate to maintain the relationship he has established with his young son Jason (the absolutely charming, if confused and angry, Anthony Rosenthal) wants it all as he sings in “A Tight-Knit Family,” trying to integrate his lover Whizzer into the lives of his ex-wife and son. Jason, however, now feels closer to Whizzer than his own father. And Trina is encouraged by Marvin to see his very own psychiatrist Mendel (Brandon Uranowitz) who almost immediately, even while advising her that “Love Is Blind,” himself falls in love with his patient.

  Before he even can imagine seeing a shrink, the boy is also encouraged and finally convinced through a pressured Whizzer to also see Mendel, who suddenly becomes the link between the family that Marvin has been seeking to be.

    Mendel represents the family’s complete dissolution by proposing to Trina, and in so doing replacing Marvin as the linchpin for both his former wife and son.

    In 2011, years before the Lincoln Center revival, I saw this work in a homegrown local production at Third Street Theater in Los Angeles. And I’ll pick up my description of that viewing for the rest of the “plot:”

 

   “Meanwhile, tension is building between Marvin and Whizzer, as the former attempts to put Whizzer in the position of homemaker. At the same time, Trina is increasingly feeling alienated by the situation, growing fearful that she is becoming less and less prominent in her family’s life (“I’m Breaking Down"). A visit from the psychiatrist for dinner and therapy results in further involvement between Mendel and Trina, and before long he has made a marriage proposal to Trina.

    Trina has mixed feelings which she expresses in “Trina’s Song,” but she realizes that Mendel’s love is sincere, and, in need of support, she realizes she could do worse. The men, all realizing their failures, together sing “The March of the Falsettos,” admitting that their roles as “masculine” examples represent a great deal of bluff.

     Trina and Mendel announce their marriage plans, and Marvin reacts with anger, violently slapping his ex-wife, both painfully singing “I Never Wanted to Love You,” a sentiment Whizzer repeats to Marvin, and Marvin relays even to his innocent son.

     By the end of the first part, Marvin has broken with Whizzer and created a gap between him and Trina. Attempting to salvage his connections with his son, he sings “Father to Son,” reassuring Jason that he will love always love him, however he turns out.

     If the first part has been almost brittle with the dilemmas Finn presents us with, the second part is even more distressing. It is now 1981, two years later. The cast has now grown by two others, lesbian neighbors of Marvin, Dr. Charlotte, an internist, and Cordelia, a kosher caterer. These two women offer support and love to the lonely Marvin, but create new problems of their own.

    Although Marvin has grown wiser (“About Time” being a song about growing up and getting over his selfish behavior), and has managed to retain a close relationship with Jason, the issue of his son’s Bar Mitzvah creates new tensions between Trina and him, she attempting to plan a large event, while Mendel (and Jason) encourage a simpler party. Caught in the middle, Jason is furious with both parents, which Mendel assures him is absolutely natural (“Everyone Hates His Parents").

    Both parents, Cordelia and Dr. Charlotte attend a baseball game in which Jason is playing, and in ‘The Ball Game,’ all make fun of themselves for watching Jewish boys “who can’t play baseball,” and getting caught up in the event. To everyone’s surprise, Whizzer shows up—invited by Jason—which creates new tensions and reveals to Marvin just how much he has missed him.

     In the midst of these adult dilemmas, Jason somehow manages to hit the ball, but is so nonplussed that he forgets to run!

    Another ‘falsetto’ piece relates their new traumas. And soon after Marvin and Whizzer return to their relationship. The war between Trina and Marvin, however, continues, until suddenly, in a racquetball game, Whizzer collapses, and is taken to the hospital. Dr. Charlotte has already warned us through song that “Something Bad Is Happening,” young men increasingly becoming ill and dying. And we soon discover that Whizzer has AIDS.

    In the trauma of the new situation, both parents offer Jason the option of “Canceling the Bar Mitzvah,” while all four of the gay figures, Marvin, Whizzer, Charlotte and Cordelia musically muse on how their love can last, “Unlikely Lovers.”

     As Whizzer’s condition worsens, Marvin turns to God, singing—a bit like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof—“Miracle of Judaism.” Suddenly all break into Whizzer’s hospital room, Jason having decided that the Bar Mitzvah should be celebrated there, with Cordelia catering the event. For a few happy moments, ‘The Bar Mitzvah,’ lifts everyone’s spirits, but suddenly Whizzer can no longer continue in their company, and is wheeled from the celebrations.

    Left alone, Marvin sings his major love song of the work, ‘What Would I Do If You Had Not Been My Friend?’ a piece which might melt away all the icebergs in Greenland, as we hear the news that Whizzer has died.

    Marvin and his friends surround him to bid the audience farewell without another round of ‘Falsettoland.’”

 

    What is easily gleaned in this story is that despite the fact that Marvin sees himself as expressing ideals, he actually is a of smart bully who has attempted to place his personal values above all others, demanding that his ex-wife, son, and lover all place their roles orbiting around him. When he finally is sent in a shove out of his pre-ordained rotation, he spins off into space out of his control finally without either family and lover, demanding, finally, that he beg for re-entry to all of their lives.

     Through his marvelous comeuppance, his newfound relationships with his lesbian neighbors, and his gradual comprehension that love is something you cannot control but that controls you, we grow to sympathize with the nominative “father,” actually is simply a confused man who finally must admit that he cannot control anything. Eventually he is even further punished by realizing just when love returns in the form of Whizzer and his son’s growing maturity the man whom he finally realizes is the center of his life all can be just easily whisked away through death.

     At the end of the work, Marvin has friends, and some affection, but he no longer has anyone at the center of his love, not even Jason who seems to have preferred the company of Whizzer. One missing piece of the cube whose form is finally restored by work’s end might be seen to represent the now dead Whizzer, but I suggest it actually emblematizes Marvin’s position, a loner punished alas for having attempted to fly to the sun, in his insatiable desires wanting to all, but left with nothing to connect to and no place any longer in the make-up of the universe.

    It is this tragic comeuppance that saves this “pop op” from being nothing other than a sentimental melodrama. Even Finn’s lyrics, almost always ending in simple rhymes, takes us unawares with its several line enjambments, where the expected rhyme appears awkwardly in the next or even third line, or sometimes slant rhymes placed next to one another, with shifts of the rhythms and repetitions where you might not expect them. Take for example the group aria, each singing to the other about how their love as not truly intended and is now being withdrawn:

 

I never wanted to love you

I only wanted to love and not be blamed

Let me go, you should know

I'm not ashamed

To have loved you

I loved you more than I meant to

In my profession, one's love stays unexpressed

Here we stand, take my hand

God, I'm distressed

How I love you

 

I hate the world!

 

He hates everything!

 

I love my dad!

 

He loves his father

 

I love the things I've never had

 

Love our family

 

Lord, hear our call!

 

Help us all

 

Help us all

 

Helps us all

 

Help us all

 

Help us all!

 

     Or consider the first two stanzas of one of the work’s best songs, “What Would I Do If You Had Not Been My Friend?”

What would I do

If I had not met you?

Who would I blame my life on?

Once I was told

That all men get what they deserve

Who the hell then threw this curve?

There are no answers, but

Who would I be

If you had not been my friend?

 

You're the only one

One out of a thousand others

Only one my child would allow

When I'm having fun

You're the one I wanna talk to

Where have you been?

Where are you now?

 

    Through the rhymes are simple: “blamed/ashamed.” “do/you,” “deserve/curve” their placement is not always what one might expect, end rhymes alternating in end line conjunctions and split infinitives that explode the regularity (the orbit) with a sort of transition of position, a break down of normality that saves Finn’s lyrics from being sticky and sentimental. Like the story, a tale of many loves, Finn and Lapine keep demonstrating the break-down of love, the individual, the family, and the society itself. In this version of the death of the American Dream, expectations are unfulfilled, familial narratives necessarily readjusted, love redefined. The voice pretending to be an expression of angelic innocence, cracks with the shifts and alterations of life into shouting matches, mean games, and questions without answers. But for all that, life demands you laugh and move on.

     It is odd that in a work that might easily have been as cynical as Sondheim’s looks at love in Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd, and Follies, this constantly reconfigured Jewish family somehow remains hopeful, marching along even if they have to stop momentarily simply to catch their breaths.

 

Los Angeles, March 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2, 2026).