six young people in the throes of puberty, overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves, learn that winning isn't everything and that losing doesn't necessarily make you a loser.nytheatre.com
A plump Jewish matron sits in the stands watching her son play baseball, then looks over in consternation at a new arrival in the crowd and croons to herself, ''Just what I wanted at a Little League game -- my ex-husband's ex- lover. Isn't that what every mother dreams of?'' In that moment, actually among the funniest and happiest of an off-Broadway musical set in the early months of the AIDS epidemic, Falsettoland expresses its edgy wit, cockeyed charm and matter-of-fact acceptance of a world Norman Rockwell never painted. Handsome men in sports clothes and sweatbands play racquetball, snorting like stags in battle, then sing love songs to each other. A female doctor and her lover, a would-be inventor of nouvelle kosher cuisine, cheerily introduce themselves as ''the lesbians from next door.'' The matron's husband, and surrogate father to her son, is the ex-husband's ex-psychiatrist. The shrink and the boy do a vaudeville-inspired soft-shoe number called Everyone Hates His Parents. The mother probably speaks for a whole generation or two when she describes her occupation in life as ''holding to the ground as the ground keeps shifting.''
The play is a study in contradictions: a laugh-a-minute musical -- about families dealing with AIDS; a tragedy filled with hope. ''When the play first started, it was referred to as an AIDS play,'' says Finn, 40, who worried that the label would limit its audience appeal. Since opening night, though, Falsettos has filled seats, thanks to word of mouth and unbeatable reviews. (''More powerful than any other American musical of its day,'' raved The New York Times's finicky Frank Rich.) Says Finn: ''It's really about life, not death.''
The story, which is loosely autobiographical, begins with composer Gordon Schwinn working at his piano, irritable because he's up against a deadline. He's supposed to write a song about spring for his boss, a dictatorial children's TV star named Mr. Bungee (he's a frog). Gordon goes to meet his friend Rhoda for lunch, passing a tart homeless woman on the way. At the restaurant, Gordon suddenly clutches his head in pain, falls face-forward into his pasta, and then collapses. At the hospital, Gordon learns that he has a rare condition called arteriovenous malformation, which causes fluid to build up on his brain. An operation is needed, but it's potentially dangerous; there's a significant chance that Gordon could die, or never recover his faculties. Surrounded by his tiny but supportive family--Rhoda, his mother, and his lover Roger--Gordon nonetheless must face this crisis alone. And what haunts him the most are the songs that he fears he will never write if he doesn't survive. And so--from his hospital bed, from his wheelchair, from the depths of an MRI, and even while comatose--Gordon writes them. They flow out of his imagination and his subconscious breathlessly and uncontrollably. Little remembered snatches of reality crop up surreally in these weirdly magical musical numbers: the homeless lady, for example, keeps appearing, and when Gordon's doctor mentions just before surgery that he has tickets to see Chicago that night, the spirit of that dark, brittle show pervades a long nightmarish sequence that Gordon hallucinates (dreams?) while in a coma.nytheatre.com