Recently watched Mrs Henderson Presents. A very good movie with witty dialogue, engaing storyline and wonderful acting. Definitely worth watching!

Also bought the Hairspray DVD! yeah!!!

Oh, by the way, remember how I whined about how Edna Turnblad should be played by a woman and not a man, and certainly not John Travolta, in my Hairspray review?

Here's what I said - Was the original character supposed to be a man in drag??? Even so, I don't see why it should be the case.

I shot myself in the foot.

Well, as I found out, the original character WAS supposed to be a man in a drag! In the Broadway version, Edna Turnbald was played by Harvey Fierstein, a well-known theatre actor famous for playing women on stage. Harvey was also famous for his plays, most notably "Torch Song Trilogy" which was released in 1981 on stage to raving reviews. According to his bio on IMDB.com, here's how Torch Song Trilogy came about:

"Following a severe bout of depression following the break up with a lover, Fierstein wrote about the painful experience and the end result was "The International Stud", which was produced at the Theater for the New City in 1976 (later at La MaMa in 1978) with Fierstein introducing and starring as his Arnold Beckoff character, a gay man whose bisexual lover dumps him for a female. Fierstein went on to write two more plays about Arnold and introduced "Fugue in a Nursery" and "Widows and Children First!", in 1979 at La MaMa, with Fierstein again playing the lead. Eventually Fierstein integrated the three Arnold plays into a single play, "Torch Song Trilogy", which was first presented off-off-Broadway in 1981, and the rest is history."

Following its theatrical success, Torch Song Trilogy was made into a movie and released in 1988 and is now a cult classic.

Harvey Fierstein has a tradmark gravelly voiced which you can hear in this clip of the Tony Awards performance of "You Can't Stop The Beat" by the Hairspray Broadway cast.



Obviously I've never watched the Broadway version before but I'm sure Harvey Fierstein makes a much better Edna Turnblad.

But as for the performance in that clip... Err... Well, they were singing and dancing at the same time so I guess can't expect totally flawless singing... -_-" Despite that, Hairspray snagged an impressive number of 8 Tony Awards, although The Producers (2001) remains the record holder of 12 Tony Awards.


Anyhow, coming back to Harvey Fierstein, here are two clips which I found online from Torch Song Trilogy. My my, Harvey has put on lots of weight since...:

Arnold painfully reminds Ma that a homosexual relationship is no less stronger than a "normal" heterosexual one, and that the loss of his partner is as painful as in any other relationship:


Arnold and Ma reconcile their difference in a poignant scene:


Watch the trailer here:.