Liars and Saints

 I resisted Harvey Fierstein's memoir because I didn't know much about HF. I hadn't liked the Michael Urie revival of "Torch Song," and I thought the book for "Newsies" was OK and not spectacular. But the critic Adam Feldman said Fierstein's memoir is not to be missed--and, with those instructions, I went to the bookstore. I think it's useful to compare Fierstein's book with another recent memoir, "Wandering through Life," by Donna Leon. Like Fierstein, Leon is a world-famous writer. But Leon's book is a flop. It's sort of charming, but it's coy. It reveals nothing about Leon--and it doesn't even address "professional highs," the things it would be (ostensibly) fun to talk about. We learn basically nothing about Leon's writing career. By contrast, Fierstein delivers. He speaks candidly about his alcoholism and his suicide attempt. He is pitiless and funny; when recalling a breakup, he says, "This w...

People wondered if Harvey Fierstein could really play Tevye. Fierstein himself wasn't skeptical: "I just played an overweight housewife from Baltimore, in HAIRSPRAY. Tevye is much closer to me." Critics were kind to Fierstein; they weren't kind, in any way, to his co-star, Rosie O'Donnell (stunt casting). There seems to be a consensus that Alfred Molina had been too "small" in the role of Tevye, and Harvey rescued the revival, or half-rescued it. Frank Rich said that "Fiddler" endures not because of light, cute numbers, but because of the monumental "Tradition" and the chills-inducing "Anatevka." Curiously, "Anatevka" was, at first, a comic number; someone had the idea, late in the day, to slow things down and make "Anatevka" mournful and linked to exile. Everyone comes from a family, and nearly everyone builds a family in his own time. The erosion of tradition really is universal. My husband ...