Harvey Fierstein, four-time Tony Award-winning actor, playwright and singer, has just turned down a part in an Adam Sandler movie.
Meanwhile, in his dressing room at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, where he stars in A Catered Affair, Fierstein is immersed in stage life, showing off photographs of great Broadway actors he has loved through the decades.
''Yes, Sandler,'' he says in the middle of a stream of consciousness about art and theater. ``I've been offered a bit part in the Sandler movie -- me and another well-known gay guy. That's the whole gag, one line. I think I have more life in me than being a side gag in an Adam Sandler movie.''
Fierstein does indeed have a long and prosperous life in show business.
His professional theater career began in 1971 with Pork, Andy Warhol's only stage work, and he was never fully warmed to film, what with his success as an author (and star) of Torch Song Trilogy as well as being the man who wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux folles.
''I'm a theater creature,'' he says, pointing toward the stage, where a yellow cab sits beside the gritty tenements on the set of A Catered Affair, a tragic-comic exploration of working class 1950s life that blurs the line between musical and drama.
The more intense scenes are carried, sometimes as a monologue, by Faith Prince, best known for her Tony Award-winning performance as Miss Adelaide in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.
She plays Aggie Hurley, a worn-down, middle-age mother who accepts her daughter's wish for a quiet registry-office wedding. As the day draws closer, Aggie pushes anxiously for a fully catered family get-together. We soon learn that her own wedding many decades earlier was that of a bride ''with a waist'' who had to be rescued from family dishonor.
Fierstein, who co-wrote the work, plays her brother, a ''confirmed bachelor'' as gay family members were known in the '50s. Both Aggie and Winston bristle against idealized American family life, but both find themselves chained to it, unable to rebel except through humor and an occasional lamenting song.
ADAPTED FROM FILM
The play is an adaptation of a 1956 film that starred Bette Davis as Aggie, Ernest Borgnine as her husband, Tom, and Barry Fitzgerald as the comical bachelor, Uncle Jack.
Fierstein insists that he did not improve on Fitzgerald's performance and has re-christened his character to make the distinction.
''I could never hope to top Barry Fitzgerald. He was one of those wonderful character actors you don't see in film anymore. Hollywood wants so many pretty faces. It wouldn't have a place today for Barry Fitzgerald,'' he says.
Fierstein re-imagines the uncle's bachelorhood as a convenient way of avoiding issues that the '50s were not willing to discuss.
When Prince's daughter, Janey, capitulates to her mother's vicarious longing for a big wedding, Fierstein's Uncle Winston offers to pick the dress and wedding outfits because ''his type'' is good at that sort of thing. ''You mean the Irish?'' asks the wedding store assistant. ''Yes, I suppose that will do,'' says Uncle Winston wistfully, holding back his anger at his closeted life until an alcohol-fueled rant at the dinner table.
Fierstein concedes that his portrayal did not go down well with some gay men when the show premiered in San Diego last fall.
'It is the worst kind of prejudice for people to say, `That is not the typical experience.' Well, it's the typical experience of this particular character in that particular place! It's like looking at The Wizard of Oz and saying, 'Well, I know girls from Kansas who were nothing like that!' ''
In his search for an authentic story, Fierstein took big risks with the cast.
Leslie Kritzer, who plays Janey, has done ''nothing but over-the-top and funny'' in her Broadway career.
''Harvey took a huge chance on me, the unconventional ingenue,'' Kritzer says. ``He plays my uncle and it really does feel like having an uncle because he is the caretaker as well as a friend.''
The best way to work with him is to just go with whatever direction his mind wanders, she insists.
''We are both into the same kind of humor. We are both crazy Geminis -- creative and we like quick wit,'' the actress says. ``It's not a conventional musical and Harvey is not a conventional writer, so you just go along with whatever he is doing.''
Fierstein also found ''a complete virgin'' in John Bucchino, who has written scores for several small musicals such as Urban Myths and Lavender Girl.
CURRENT EVENTS
Although it cuts through social issues, he and Bucchino were not trying to be overtly political, Fierstein says. His aim is simply ''to inject some real humanity back into Broadway.'' And director John Doyle, best known for his revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company, helped steer the play away from social commentary and toward wrenching family drama.
In one scene, a soldier delivers an American flag and a bereavement check to Aggie and her husband after their son is killed in the Korean War. The parallels today are clear, but both Fierstein and Doyle insist that the drama should not be smothered by political sloganeering.
''There is something about leaving the piece in the time it was set,'' Fierstein says. ``If this was about the Iraq war, people would think we were preaching. The skill of John Doyle is to show the audience the symbols and let it be. He trusts the audience to get it.''
Politics is eclipsed by family bickering, says Fierstein, because that's life. ''People don't have this dramatic finality when someone they love dies,'' he says. ``They have to get up in the morning, feed the kids and get on with it. That's what this play is about. It's a plea for people who have to find a way through it all and get on with life.''
