HARVEY FIERSTEIN

Britain gets its Kinky Boots on…

Words: Mark Shenton

THE KING OF BROADWAY

Harvey Fierstein is a legend of entertainment and gay rights activism. His first acting job was in Andy Warhol’s only play Pork, and he wrote and starred in Torch Song Trilogy, the first Broadway play to make money, before then starring in the film adaptation alongside Matthew Broderick. He wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles and created the role of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray The Musical. He is one of only three actors to have received Tony awards in four different categories, played the first openly gay character on Broadway, and has appeared in multiple films including Mrs Doubtfire, Independence Day and Bullets Over Broadway. This month he premieres the iconic musical, Kinky Boots, along with his play Casa Valentina in London. “It’s always exciting to get your work done,” says the famously gravelly-voiced Fierstein, talking to me on the phone from his Connecticut home. Fierstein is talkative but also combative, repeatedly resisting my attempts to make connections between his works. His career has regularly been about pushing the theatrical envelope, but he clearly refuses to be put into one.

Michael childers/corbis

What do you feel about having your work done back to back in London, and in particular seeing Casa Valentina done again in England?

I’ve not seen this production of Casa Valentina, so I’m very curious. I always thought that English actors would really get right down into it — they would be a little less scared of it. We’re a bit more scared of gender identity in the US, so I’m really looking forward to that. But knowing that it’s happening but not being there means it’s rather like a mystery box. I don’t know these actors or the director, so I have to make that wonderful act of faith when you step off a cliff. But one of the wonderful parts of theatre is that it’s alive, and it will be what it’s now, and someone 20 years from now will do it again, and it will be something else. But your children grow up, and go out into the world. You have to let them go.