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Arts & Entertainment

Falsettos

Falsettos is the two-act story of Marvin and his attempts to create a new kind of family. He divorced his wife, Trina, to make a new life with his on-again, off-again male companion Whizzer. Yet, he does not want to lose the connection to, and affections of, his ex-wife and son Jason; in fact, he wants the foursome to exist as one big happy family. Complicating matters is Marvin and Trina’s psychiatrist, Mendel. Jason struggles with the confusing realities of a broken and reconstituted family, his father’s new life as a gay man, and his own move from boyhood to manhood.

Act II takes place two years later as Jason prepares for his bar mitzvah. Marvin’s lesbian neighbors (Charlotte, a nurse and Cordelia, a kosher caterer), become close friends and confidantes. Marvin and Whizzer find themselves settling on solid ground in their relationship, as Marvin learns to love unselfishly and unconditionally. Jason’s bar mitzvah and Whizzer’s life- threatening illness brings together the entire “family.”

Falsettos is a combination of two earlier one-act plays; March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, with music and lyrics written by William Finn and books by James Lapine. The Broadway production, directed by Lapine, opened in April 1992 and ran for nearly 500 performances. It won two Tony Awards (Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score) and was nominated for five more.

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