FEBRUARY 7, 1997 GAY PEOPle's ChronICLE

23

EVENINGS OUT

Harvey Fierstein is savvy and outrageous at OSU show

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-It was indeed a trademark performance. Savvy yet sexual, hilarious yet provocative, outrageous yet profound. And of course that one-of-a-kind voice, that baritone rasp, unmistakably that of Harvey Fierstein.

The performance in this case was Fierstein's one-man show This Ain't Gonna Be Pretty, done as part of Ohio State University's Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Awareness Week. And Harvey was right! It was definitely not pretty-it was brilliantly life-affirming.

Fierstein, who leapt into the entertainment limelight as writer of the Broadway musical adaptation of La Cage Aux Folles (which still "pays all my bills today") and as the Tony-winning actor and author of Torch Song Trilogy has recently moved into Hollywood mainstream films like Mrs. Doubtfire and Independence Day.

Whatever the medium, wherever the place, Fierstein has always proclaimed proudly “I am what I am!" Last week at OSU he made it sufficiently evident that the GLB community at large should be proud to have him as one of its most vocal and active spokespeople.

Fierstein sauntered onto the stage, amid already thunderous applause, in a black sweater and jeans, wearing bright yellow rubber gloves, "in case there [were] any straight people here." Fierstein makes no apologies for making straight people the target of his humor. After all, as he explained in a post-performance interview, “Straight comedians get a lot of mileage out of gay stereotypes of limp wrists and limper lisps.” In the world of Harvey Fierstein's performances absolutely nothing is sacred.

The most provocative and spine-tingling moment of the evening came early in the show when Fierstein took one of the American flags draped on the piano and donned it, à la Larry Flynt, and howled, "The fucking right wing has taken over this flag but it's my flag, too." While the humor was unmistakably omnipresent, it is moments like this that make Fierstein a cut above the rest.

From reclaiming ownership of the flag, Fierstein moved on to say that in fact it was the left and people like him that truly stood for "freedom, and liberty and equality for all"-those inherent and immutable and much abused truisms embedded in the red, white and blue.

Often a target of the censors, Fierstein took on those like Bob Dole and Tipper Gore who want to censor rap music and gay films and other expressions of the oppressed and disenfranchised. Fierstein scathingly commented that what these people are blind to is that such art "is a reflection of these people's lives" and as leaders and politicians they "should change lives, not the art!"

But lest this be mis-

of course you're “Tom

by a group of Republicans in the Undergraduate Student Government, led by David Overreem. Before the finale, Fierstein paused and asked if Overreem had bothered to show up.

After a tense pause, a voice from the darkness of the auditorium answered in the affirmative. Fierstein invited him onto the

"As law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, gays should have the right to a fifty percent divorce rate just like the heterosexuals."

leading, not everything was so serious. Unless Cruise, Whitney Houston, Lily Tomlin (no surprise there, huh?) Jodie Foster, Kirstie Al ley and her husband, or John Travolta and his wife." You guessed it! Being a Hollywood insider, Harvey confirmed the rumors. Or did he? Because in This Ain't Gonna Be Pretty Fierstein made sure that he constantly reminded us (and always with a wink) that what he said was 100 percent true.

The audience howled as Fierstein read excerpts from the newspaper in his “fictitious" hometown in Connecticut and as he belted Bessie Smith's "Kitchen Man," taking the double entendre into a fifth dimension. In a generous question-and-answer session in between songs, he was asked how he got his signature voice. A mere thumb in his mouth brought the entire house down.

What was so amazing about Fierstein was that while he entertained the completely soldout house, he could make you feel like he was talking just to you and you alone. His personal anecdotes-from a dressing room visit on Broadway by Carol Channing, who said that Torch Song Trilogy reminded her of "the gay Raisin in the Sun," to the fact that Independence Day was made by "two of the biggest queens in Hollywood," made one feel like it was a fireside chat in his living room.

Nowhere was this more apparent when Harvey read an excerpt from his lesser known play Safe Sex. The high spirits and raucous laughter morphed into hushed breathlessness as he recounted how AIDS has forever changed the world, leaving many, many gay men and women "angry, frightened and alone."

As though this wasn't drama enough, what followed couldn't have been scripted better, even by Shakespeare. Fierstein's appearance and partial funding at OSU had been opposed

stage for a dialogue. In keeping with the tradition of the

evening, Fierstein

joked

with

Overreem that he "doesn't want anyone, anywhere ever to assume that I'm heterosexual."

For the next five minutes Fierstein attempted to "heal the open wound of bigotry" by explaining to him that gays needed to celebrate their difference and existence through Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Awareness Week and by other means, because there are 365 days a year devoted to celebrating heterosexuality.

Backstage, Fierstein expressed a fervent desire that his meeting with Overreem on stage had not hardened him further, but that it had hopefully changed his misguided thinking just a bit. At the reception, Overreem seemed to express no such transformation but insisted that he was deeply “misunderstood" and "misquoted" and that all he was asking was that "what gays do behind closed doors should stay there."

Clearly Overreem's lack of enthusiasm for Harvey's work stood alone that evening, much like his bigotry and false accusations, all drowned out by a standing ovation and gushing praise. What was supposed to run an hour and seven minutes ran an hour longer.

"Harvey handled the Overreem controversy with taste," said OSU BIGALA president Joshua Black, adding that such dialogue and communication is what "college and education are all about."

Teri Giles, an OSU student in the audience, was deeply moved by the reading from Safe Sex because it reminded her of the "great importance of pride and self awareness" that all gays and lesbians must find in and for themselves.

Above all, that was Fierstein's message for the evening. While goose bumps probably arose among the audience, Harvey pronounced unequivocally that we all should "appreciate the world we grow up in, every day try to change it, every day try to make it better."

Even backstage, Fierstein's enthusiasm to change the world was unmitigated. He said that he's not so sure that "homosexuals should try and completely ape heterosexuals by getting married, et cetera."

"But," he added, “as law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, gays should have the right to a fifty percent divorce rate just like the heterosexuals."

For the encore, Fierstein performed a showstopping and heart-pounding “adult lullaby" in which he mourned those lost to AIDS and gave the audience a glimpse into the future without the plague. With a stark honesty he sang, "I wonder how I'll feel when they fold the quilt away."

Till then we need Harvey, if only to remind us what Sakini told us in the play Tea House of the August Moon: “Pain makes man think, thought makes man wise, and wisdom makes life endurable."

Lucky for us that Feirstein's going to continue to be around, because as he confided in us, he's "only eighteen-well, all right, eighteen and a half... in gay years!"

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