Lanford Wilson’s 1964 one-act The Madness of Lady Bright, a dynamic character study of an aging drag queen, is frequently cited as America’s first “gay play.” It premiered at Caffe Cino, an off-off-Broadway coffeehouse theater in New York’s Greenwich Village that also nurtured the work of emerging gay playwrights Robert Patrick, Tom Eyen, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and William M. Hoffman.
Harvey Fierstein’s funny and moving Torch Song Trilogy opened on Broadway in 1982 after developmental productions off-off-Broadway in the late 1970s. It’s a suite of one-acts about wisecracking but vulnerable female impersonator Arnold Beckoff and his complex relationships with his bisexual lover, Ed; Ed’s wife, Laurel; a gay teenager named David whom Arnold adopts; and, most intensely, Arnold’s disapproving mother. A shortened version of the work, titled Torch Song, played on Broadway last year and is slated for a national tour this fall.
