Harvey Fierstein's new play opening on Broadway, Spring 2014

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/9/13 at 10:17pm

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/MTC-to-Stage-World-Premiere-of-Harvey-Fiersteins-New-Play-CASA-VALENTINA-in-April-2014-Joe-Mantello-to-Direct-20130909

Exciting! This sounds promising.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 9/9/13 at 10:21pm

Sounds like a promising premise ripe for a Fierstein play, that's for sure. Hopefully he can get his groove back with a play, since his musical books of late have...left a bit to be desired.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/9/13 at 10:27pm

I'm crossing everything that this is all that it could be. TORCH SONG TRILOGY is exquisite, so we know he's got it in him. And this sounds like a promising premise.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/9/13 at 10:28pm

Promising Premise squared. (Lord, I'm tired.)

[eperkins]

Posted: 9/10/13 at 7:57am

I assume this play is based on the book "Casa Susanna." Here's the blurb from the book:

Some time ago, while at a New York flea market, inveterate collectors Michael Hurst and Robert Swope discovered a large body of snapshots: album after aged album of well-preserved images, taken roughly between the mid-50s and mid-60s, depicting a group of cross-dressers united around a place called Casa Susanna, a rather large and charmingly banal Victorian-style house in small-town New Jersey. The inhabitants, visitors, guests, and hosts used it as a weekend headquarters for a regular “girl’s life.” Someone—probably “Susanna” or the matriarch—nailed a wonder board on a tree proclaiming it “Casa Susanna,” and thus a Queendom was born.

Through these wonderfully intimate shots—perhaps never intended to see the light of day outside the sanctum of the “house”—Susanna and her gorgeous friends styled era-specific fashion shows and dress-up Christmas and tea parties. As gloriously primped as these documentary snaps are, it is in the more private and intimate life at Casa Susanna, where the girls sweep the front porch, cook, knit, play Scrabble, relax at the nearby lake and, of course, dress for the occasion, that the stunning insight to a very private club becomes nothing less than brilliant and awe inspiring in its pre-glam, pre-drag-pose ordinariness and nascent preening and posturing in new identities. It is not glamour for the stage but for each other, like other women who dress up to spend time with friends, flaunting their own sense of style. There is an evident pleasure of being here, at Casa Susanna, that is a liberation, a simplification of the conflicts inherent in a double life.

(EDIT): A little correction. The above blurb was from Amazon, and although it states the house was in New Jersey, it was in fact located in a small town (Hunter) in the Catskills.

Updated On: 9/10/13 at 07:57 AM