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Harvey Fierstein, ‘Kinky Boots’ step out on national tour

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October 29, 2014

Harvey Fierstein, the six-time Tony Award-winning actor, playwright and gay activist, laughed as he recalled how a reporter once shamelessly rifled through his New York-area apartment. “She went through the entire house and kept opening all the closets,” he said during a recent telephone interview, speaking in his trademark gravelly voice with its broad Brooklyn accent. “I said, ‘What are you looking for?’ And she said, ‘I’m looking for the dresses.’ So I said, ‘There are no dresses here. I dress at the theater if I have to perform [in drag], but I don’t do it at home. I’m not a transvestite.’”

Even if Fierstein prefers male attire in his personal life, he has made a career of writing and performing characters in glorious drag. His breakthrough “Torch Song Trilogy”— a collection written originally as three one-act plays in the late 1970s and ’80s and one of the first Broadway productions ever to proffer major gay themes — spotlights a Jewish female impersonator struggling to find love and family. Fierstein’s 1983 musical adaptation of the French play “La Cage aux Folles” revolves around the owner of a drag nightclub and the shenanigans that ensue when his straight son brings home his fiancée’s conservative parents for a meet-and-greet.

On Broadway, Fierstein has portrayed Edna Turnblad, the mother of the rock ’n’ roll-smitten heroine in “Hairspray” — in a full-body fat suit; and one of Fierstein’s newest plays, “Casa Valentina,” was inspired by a real Catskills resort where straight, married men escaped to don corsets, dresses and high heels.

In 2012, Fierstein premiered another cross-dresser into the book of his musical “Kinky Boots,” with music and lyrics by pop star Cyndi Lauper, based on the 2005 British movie of the same name. With music that ranges in style from new wave to tango, the story tells of Charlie, the owner of a beleaguered shoe factory, who reinvents his business to sell sturdy, if sky-high, stilettos to men, with the help of a feisty transvestite, Lola. The musical earned six Tonys last year — more than any other production — and will arrive at the Pantages Theatre as part of its national tour on Nov. 11. (His musical “Newsies,” inspired by the real-life newsboy strike of 1899, will open at the Pantages in the spring.)

In a breezy conversation, Fierstein recalled performing in drag during his acting debut in Andy Warhol’s only play, “Pork,” in New York several decades ago. “It was like I was hiding,” he says of that early experience. “You can be a lot stronger [on stage], and a lot braver, if you have that mask in front of you.”

But he said practically the only dresses he has ever had in his own home were some costumes for “La Cage aux Folles” he once stashed in his basement.  

So, why all the drag queens in his work? “A guy walks onstage in jeans and a T-shirt and you go, ‘Um, OK,’ ” he said. “But a guy walks onstage in a big ball gown and you go, ‘Now we’re in for something.’ Drag is just inherently theatrical.  

“And, you know, the most boring people on Earth are those who just do what they’re told without questioning,” he added. “People that do drag have at least posed a question to the world, and usually not just one. There is something that says this is a person who’s searching for something. And also it’s so inherently sexy. What’s sexier than Marlene Dietrich in a top hat and tails?”

During the interview, Fierstein waved away questions about his Jewish background: “Yes, I grew up Jewish in Brooklyn — is that so exciting?” he said. In the 2000s, he portrayed Tevye in a Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Fierstein became more loquacious when the conversation turned to “Kinky Boots.” He explained how his first impulse was to decline the project when Jerry Mitchell, the play’s director, approached him some five years ago.  Fierstein had seen the film and deemed it excellent, “So, I thought, ‘What am I going to bring that’s new to a musical [version]?’ ”

But he had worked with Mitchell on “Hairspray,” and he already had refused a couple of previous projects brought to him by his old friend. “When he came to me with ‘Kinky Boots,’ I thought, ‘Oh s—.  I can’t turn him down again,’ ” Fierstein said.

“So I went back and watched the movie, and I saw basically that it was mostly about saving this town and all these people’s jobs at the shoe factory, which they do just wonderfully in the film. I knew I couldn’t add to that. But I also saw this other thing happening, more [subtly]: The story of two wounded young men, whose fathers wanted them to grow up a certain way, and both for different reasons didn’t want to follow that path. And then they meet each other, and although they couldn’t possibly be more different, they find that they can eventually heal themselves by accepting the other person. That’s what I thought I could bring to the play.”

Fierstein said that he himself had a favorable relationship with his father, an Eastern European immigrant who had grown up in an orphanage and so placed family above all else, even when Fierstein came out as gay.

If Fierstein identifies with his “Kinky Boots” characters, it’s in the way wounded souls make their way in the world: “Gloria Steinem wrote a book called ‘Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem,’ in which she says, ‘I don’t care if you have the best parents in the world, as a child you cannot possibly express what your needs are. So you’re going to grow up with holes in your psyche, and those holes have to be filled in order for you to be totally self-accepting.’ We all have these holes, so I thought this could be a theme that would work well in the play.”

Fierstein admitted that he was picky when it came to choosing the artist to write the music and lyrics for “Kinky Boots.” 

“Producers kept coming to me with composers who were just going to do the same old thing,” he said. “But life is very precious to me, and I don’t have time to do crap. … I mean, it may come out crap,” he said, “but I want to aim for something higher.”

He turned to Lauper, with whom he has been friends since they met at an AIDS charity gala in 2003. “I knew I could get her started, because she could write the club music for songs that take place in Lola’s nightclub,” he said.  “And then I could back her into the writing of a musical, which is a very different sort of thing.  Most composers care about their own sound; they want the show to sound like them. But I felt I could get Cyndi to understand that it’s not about her, it’s about the characters — and I was right.”

The process took five years — both Fierstein and Lauper were busy with myriad other projects — and was at times contentious. “I had to come up with a way of sort of whipping Cyndi to get her back and focused on the show, and that became somewhat of a [strict] mother-daughter relationship because she would always feel that I was being tough on her. So I just took on the role of ‘Mommie Dearest,’ ” he said with a laugh.

 

For tickets and information, visit this story at http://hollywoodpantages.com.

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