This 'Affair' is love

Harvey Fierstein, who stars in the musical "A Catered Affair," also wrote the book based on the film by Gore Vidal and the teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky. He shares his dressing room at the Walter Kerr Theatre with a new resident, a marionette bride named Constance. (Newsday / Ari Mintz / April 3, 2008)

'Nazis!" Harvey Fierstein spits out the word and leans back in a folding chair. Under discussion is "The Sound of Music," and how, in Harvey-speak, "it ain't just about some girl on a hill."

"There ... were ... Nazis!" he repeats. "You weren't there because somebody had made a film comedy in the 1980s and turned it into a musical. When you walked out of the theater, you felt as if you had seen a theater piece."

Fierstein just wants to love musical theater again, and the spritzy, sitcomized stage adaptations of recent years aren't satisfying him. With "A Catered Affair" - for which he wrote the book and, in a first, produced - the Connecticut-based actor intends to put something with "more humanity" back on Broadway's plate. It opens April 17 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Faith Prince, Tom Wopat and Leslie Kritzer, the scene-stealing chorus girl from "Legally Blonde," head the cast. Fierstein's book is an update of Paddy Chayefsky's final "Catered Affair" teleplay, which was itself adapted by Gore Vidal for the 1956 movie that starred Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds. The Brillo pad-voiced actor plays Winston, the bachelor uncle who lives on the family sofa, a role significantly expanded from the film.

As the 1950s-set "Affair" gets under way, the Hurley family is returning to the Bronx from a memorial service for their soldier son, who has died in Korea. Aggie Hurley (Prince) wants her daughter, Janey (Kritzer), to have a lavish, catered wedding, but Tom Wopat, the cab-driver father, wants to use the government check that the family will receive to buy out his share in a taxi cab.

The moment in time spurs Aggie to take stock of her own two decades of marriage.

"When you've been married 20-something years and your daughter's getting married, you're obviously going to take that journey back to where you were when this happened," Fierstein says, rocking his chair back against the table in his dressing room.

By tradition, the four-time Tony winner (most recently, for "Hairspray") waits until after a show opens to decorate his personal space. All that's in the room is the folding chair, his notebook computer (ask to see the North Shore Animal League puppy photos - he used to be a spokesman) and a marionette, dangling from the ceiling, dressed in a wedding gown. That's Constance, a gift, and Fierstein says "Affair" director John Doyle ("Sweeney Todd") finds her "incredibly creepy."

"A Catered Affair" is not, by any stretch, about a wedding, even though a marketing gimmick on the show's Web site invites cast and audience to contribute anecdotes about their own nuptials.

"What it's about is family politics," Fierstein says. "You fall in love, you decide you're going to have a life together, and then the chazarei starts." Ultimately, Fierstein says, "A Catered Affair" asks the question that faces every mother and daughter: Whose wedding is this, anyway?

Fierstein says he has been drawn to the meaty Chayefsky material since seeing the film as a boy. In the 1980s, he even tried to get the musical made, with Chita Rivera.

"There are writers who write beautiful, and maybe writers who write better, but Chayefsky saw into things. He sees

this part of us that nobody else bothers with. It's not that it's perfectly written. It's that the essence of being a human being is so there in the story. It's a cheat on the show to say it's about a wedding. It's about being human."

"Humanity," he repeats, is what's missing most on Broadway today. When Fierstein leaves the theater nowadays, he says his mind wanders, but usually just to which restaurant he's going to for dinner.

"I don't walk out feeling as if I've seen a theater piece anymore," he says. "Look, I like to see gorgeous chorus boys undulating across the stage as much as the next guy, but it does start to feel like empty calories after a while."

Six reasons to love HARVEY FIERSTEIN

Torch Song Trilogy," Broadway, 1982; film, 1988

Fierstein is a torch-song singing Jewish drag queen living in New York City in the 1980s (two Tonys).

"La Cage Aux Folles," Broadway, 1983

Fierstein wrote the book (a Tony) and Jerry Herman did music and lyrics for Broadway's first mainstream gay musical.

" The Simpsons" ("Simpson and Delilah"), TV, 1990

The groundbreaking second episode of the second season features first butt-patting between same-sex cartoon characters. Harvey voices Karl, Homer's new assistant.

"Mrs. Doubtfire," film, 1993

He plays the likable cosmetician brother of Robin Williams.

"Hairspray," Broadway, 2003

He wins a fourth Tony in the Divine role of Edna Turnblad.

"Fiddler on the Roof," Broadway 2005

He succeeds Alfred Molina at the Minskoff Theatre and eventually stars opposite Rosie O'Donnell. It's "Tradition," in the nontraditional sense.

Related topic galleries: Music Theater, Music, Rosie O'Donnell, Broadway, Marriage, John Doyle, Cartoons