Relationship Spotlight: Marvin & Whizzer (Falsettos)

In Falsettos, every relationship in the Trina-Marvin-Whizzer triangle (not a love triangle exactly, but a triangle none the less) is fascinating to me.  Whizzer and Marvin provide all sorts of interesting material to dig into, a couple with tons of major problems that yet still offers enough of the good that you can hope they’re able to work it out.  As with many aspects of the show, the Act I and Act II sides of this relationship are practically night and day, meaning there’s plenty to explore (spoilers.)

“Combative” is the word that immediately comes to mind for Marvin and Whizzer in Act I.  So much of their relationship is somewhere between charged competitiveness and an all-out power struggle.  A good chunk of that is down to Marvin’s lingering adherence to stereotyped gender roles (despite the fact that he’s now in a same-sex relationship.)  Marvin struggles with who he is as a man, and he often manages that by forcing Whizzer to conform to a “submissive housewife” ideal, staying home and doing the cooking/housework while Marvin is the provider.

Obviously, this isn’t a role Whizzer is well-suited for, particularly the “submissive” part – he resents being told what to be, and that makes him act out to provoke Marvin.  Both men admit that “of all the lesser passions, / [they] like fighting most,” and fight they do, over everything.  Whizzer chafes under the narrow boxes Marvin tries to put him in, and when he asserts himself, Marvin takes it as a threat to his own sense of manhood (so much of this show is just Marvin learning to be okay with who he is.)  These battles extend from the major to the minor; when they break up in the second half of Act I, it’s literally over a chess game.  Marvin has this need to make Whizzer less to make himself more, and when Whizzer refuses to “be a patsy” for him, Marvin can’t take it.

Yeah, dysfunctional up the wazoo, clearly.  Whizzer and Marvin both hurt one another a lot – much of this is on Marvin and his issues, but Whizzer certainly isn’t one to take the high road – and when they break up, it’s a long time coming.  However, even amidst all the fights and mindgames and messed-up power dynamics, there’s also this core of what they could be together.  Each loves the other deeply, not quite knowing what he’ll do with himself when they part ways, but throughout Act I, they both play this game of chicken with their feelings.  Neither is willing to be the first one to bend and admit he needs the other, and so they both make themselves miserable by keeping the other at arm’s length, both insisting on waiting for the other to give in first.  As such, when they part, it breaks both of them.  More hurt, more heartbreak, which only makes them want to hurt each other more.

Despite the love beneath the damage, it’s the kind of relationship that I’d ordinarily be hard-pressed to root for.  I think that the time jump in the second act – skipping ahead two years – is really the only thing that gives these guys a chance.  It’s clear that Marvin in particular has grown and changed a lot in the interim, without which there’s no way they could make it work.  But they do.  When they see each other again at Jason’s baseball game, each is justifiably wary but still drawn to the other.  They’re also made painfully aware of how much they miss the other; it’s implied that Marvin hasn’t been with anyone since Whizzer, and it seems that Whizzer went back to his old habits of casual fun with no feelings attached.  Although each tries to warn himself away from the other, they find themselves circling one another again.

I’ll be honest here:  I really love the playful joy and depth of feeling in their Act II relationship, but I do think it feels a little unrealistic considering their issues in Act I.  Yes, they’ve both grown and changed, and when everything hits the fan, they have something to deal with that eclipses any of their former problems, but it feels like there are a few steps missed in between.  To an extent, it feels like most of Marvin and Whizzer’s thornier edges get shaved down in order to maximize the tragedy when Whizzer gets sick, and while I understand the impulse, they’re a lot less the extremely messy, engrossingly-complex characters they were in Act I, and I wish the show could have balanced the two sides a little better.

However, I understand the reasoning behind it.  When the second act of Falsettos was written, unlike its first, we were in the thick of the AIDS crisis, and there were a lot of people in the world who didn’t care about the fact that gay men were dying from a horrific disease.  Writing about gay characters with HIV was an inherently political act, and I get the need on a writer’s part to go above and beyond to make the audience recognize that character’s humanity, to feel sympathy for him and his partner when he dies.  The fight for representation has been long and is still on-going, and at different points in that fight, the tactics needed have been different – I understand that, and so I get why the characters are softened the way they are.

And really, like I said, I do love it.  I love that Whizzer and Marvin play racquetball together and are able to enjoy being competitive, playing and teasing each other but not acting like their (read:  Marvin’s) masculinity is at stake.  Given what he’s like in Act I, it’s amazing how unselfish Marvin is in his love for Whizzer as his health declines.  It’s visceral and heartbreaking, but Marvin is in it for the long haul, with no intention of bailing no matter how awful it gets.  And of course, most of all, there’s the exquisite “What More Can I Say?”, where Marvin tries to articulate his at-long-last understanding of love while Whizzer sleeps beside him.  Gorgeous.