Casa Valentina

Reviewed by Myron Meisel
Pasadena Playhouse
Through April 10

RECOMMENDED

I remember, back when young and impecunious, sneaking into the house during first intermission to catch the last two acts of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, only to be so smitten that I returned the following day to buy a ticket to see the first act and stay again for the rest.

Curiously, since then virtually all of Fierstein’s writing for Broadway has been as librettist for musicals, so it’s been a long wait for a straight play. Casa Valentina, nominated for four Tonys in 2014, including best play (though ironically with a much shorter run than Lavery’s far less audience-pleasing Frozen), arrives triumphantly in its west coast premiere in what may be the Pasadena Playhouse’s finest and most popular offering in years (since perhaps Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius in 2008, upon reflex recall).

Set in 1962 at a Catskills lodge dedicated as a refuge for transvestite men to be fully at ease expressing their hidden, forbidden identities in one another’s society, Casa Valentina expertly encases an enlightening historical perspective on a neglected and little-understood subculture within a vastly entertaining comedy-drama readily accessible to all save the most recalcitrant sensibilities.

Fierstein has the knack for juxtaposing side-splitting verbal and visual humor with tender pathos, and under David Lee’s expert direction of an experienced ensemble that knows how to sock it all across, Casa Valentina could well end up as the local commercial theater’s nonpareil hit of the year, a show to occasion reflection while never scanting the laughs — Arthur Miller with guffaws.

Casa Valentina adroitly initiates its audience into a secret society, leading us gently but firmly into its mores and ambience, the infectious goodwill of the blunt males aspiring to conjure up their inner femininity as a compulsion to self-expression. They aspire to ever-higher delicacies even as societal repression brings out either finer moral principles or fearful self-protection. Taking place over an eventful fourteen hours, in various spaces about Tom Buderwitz’s astonishingly supple and versatile set, it’s a long day’s journey into night for this motley gang of aspirational ladies.

Naturally, there’s a snake in this Eden, an ambitious organizer of a national movement for social and legal acceptance of transvestism, an admirable crusade, yet one all too ready to advance its agenda at the expense of the “homosexual” (to use the parlance of the time, as Fierstein accurately employs) community. Public animus of the era could not distinguish between the two, and while all the Valentina patrons fear being inaccurately tarred as “immoral child predators,” others have experienced a natural supportive alliance with their fraternal brothers in socially forbidden identities.

The moral and political arguments aren’t advanced subtly, yet Fierstein evinces a genuine even-handedness in investing all views, even those he condemns, with nuance and the curse of good intentions. With his unerring popular instincts, he’s inclusive in recognizing the humanity in those with whom he encourages us to disagree and in his insistence on compassion as a virtue above all others in civil discourse.

The entire ensemble excels on every level of behavioral detail, necessarily abetted by Kate Bergh’s brilliant character costuming. (Rarely has it been so evident onstage that the actors locate their characters’ essences through their choice of shoes.) Director Lee’s trump contribution is to impart such a delicate balance to the often raucous proceedings that each actor shines individually while contributing to the sturdy fabric of the whole tapestry.

Whether or not Oscar Wilde actually decreed that good artists borrow while great ones steal, it’s a trifle indulgent that Fierstein quotes so copiously from Wilde’s bon mots, no matter how apropos and delightful. The play itself perhaps achieves its points and effects so effortlessly that it can appear lightweight, though even when it stoops to conquer, it implies a heft and startling relevance to our own time without compromising its talent to amuse.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through April 10. (626) 356-7529, pasadenaplayhouse.org. Running time: Two hours, 15 minutes including intermission.