“I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but it was also kind of a lifetime ago. or according to anyone else - because no one was. “I was in touch with this sort of feminine side of myself in great part because I wasn't gay. Really, you know, when I first read it, Ed was the character that I most responded to because I was in Texas and 16, you know, and I thought, ‘That's more like me, I think.’ Michael Urie: “I knew the play, I'd read it in high school, but the idea that I would be Arnold was never on my radar. On how Urie related to the character of Ed

'Sometimes we just hold each other for a second, just for a second, in passing.' Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl in 'Torch Song.' (Courtesy of Matthew Murphy) Interview Highlights 'When we pass each other backstage after the big fight scene. Now, 'it hits them over the head,' he says. Urie tells Young that scene 'wasn't surprising to people' when they first saw it in the 1980s. The play culminates in a huge blowout between Arnold and his mother, who is also mourning the loss of Arnold's father, her husband of 35 years. And he even says in the play, 'The life I want is the life she's had.' ' 'She's trying to get him to change for his own good,' Ruehl tells Here & Now's Robin Young, 'so that he will be more comfortable in the world, that he might be able to have a family, get married, have children, have the good life that she has had. Arnold's overbearing mother, played by Mercedes Ruehl, hates her son's homosexuality. Years later, Arnold is fostering a troubled, gay teen, and he is mourning the death of Alan, who was beaten to death by kids with baseball bats. They remain friends, and later go on a weekend getaway, Ed with his wife, Laurel, and Arnold with his new young love, Alan - except Ed and Arnold end up cuddling together. It starts with Arnold, played in this version by Michael Urie ( as a heavily made-up, preening drag queen talking to the audience as he dresses.Īs Arnold matures, he has a relationship with a closeted, eventually married, man named Ed. The original production first debuted in 1982. Renamed ' Torch Song' ( and rewritten into two acts, the play follows Arnold Beckoff's struggle to be accepted as a young Jewish gay man living in New York City in the late 1970s and '80s. Harvey Fierstein's Tony Award-winning 'Torch Song Trilogy' is back on Broadway. Michael Urie and Jack DiFalco in 'Torch Song.' (Courtesy of Matthew Murphy) This article is more than 4 years old.

Torch song trilogy on broadway