Casa Valentina: Theater Review

The 1982 work that put playwright-actor Harvey Fierstein on the map was Torch Song Trilogy, a bittersweet account of a New York Jewish drag queen’s longing for love and family. In Casa Valentina, his first full-length non-musical play on Broadway in almost 30 years, he explores a curious footnote in transgender history, setting the action in 1962 at a Catskill Mountains cross-dressing resort where married men went to lose themselves in female identities for the weekend. Joe Mantello’s impeccable production and a cast of outstanding actors make this an engrossing portrait of a marginalized group, but the strong set-up isn’t matched by focused follow-through.