Relationship Spotlight: Whizzer & Trina (Falsettos)

Another of the fascinating relationships in Falsettos.  This one is perhaps the most intriguing because, while it’s definitely there, the show itself contains next to nothing that features Whizzer and Trina actually interacting as characters.  And yet, through Marvin, their lives have become intrinsically linked, and even if we don’t often seem them overtly relating to one another, the show demonstrates their ties in other ways (spoilers.)

At the start of the show, Trina and Whizzer are in one another’s lives basically at Marvin’s behest.  While Marvin has divorced Trina and gotten together with Whizzer, he isn’t interested in fully letting Trina go, either, and he’s contrived his “tight-knit family” set-up wherein he, his boyfriend, his ex-wife, and his son all coexist and share meals together.  Unsurprisingly, this isn’t a scenario either Trina or Whizzer is comfortable with; Trina makes numerous mentions of her feelings about the unconventional situation, and although Whizzer isn’t nearly as demonstrative about his inner feelings, he struggles with Marvin’s need to go “off playing family charades.”  However, both are to their own extent under Marvin’s demanding thumb, and both uneasily go along with the arrangement until it breaks down through other means.

Trina in particular has reason to resent Whizzer.  After all, he’s the “other man” who broke up her marriage (never mind the fact that, since Marvin is gay, it wouldn’t have worked out with him and Trina anyway,) and after having had such an unsatisfying relationship with Marvin herself, it aggravates her to think of Whizzer making Marvin happy, and vice versa.  But despite what she freely admits are her best efforts, she can’t bring herself to take any of those feelings out on Whizzer.  Nearly every time she discusses her thoughts about Whizzer, it’s clear that she’s upset about the situation, not at him.  “As far as enemies go, / Whizzer is not so bad,” she observes in one song, later confessing that she wants to hate him but can’t, and when Whizzer gets sick in Act II, she wrestles with how to react to it.  Despite “trying not to care about this man who Marvin loves,” she realizes that Whizzer “shared [her] life.”

Through the forced relationship that Marvin engineers in Act I, yes, and through their shared parental/step-parental love for Jason, yes, but more than that.  Because of their mutual experience with Marvin, Whizzer and Trina have both felt the brunt of the ways Marvin takes out his issues and insecurities on those close to him.  Marvin’s messed-up notions of gender roles and need to maintain a traditional “provider husband”/“doting housewife” set-up in his relationship with Whizzer means that Whizzer has to deal with the same sort of crap that Trina did, expected to do the cooking, be pretty, and be ready to give Marvin whatever he wants.  Similarly, both are well-versed in Marvin’s mind games, how he lashes out at others in order to feel less insignificant.

Even though, as I said, we almost never see Trina and Whizzer exchanging lyrics as dialogue the way nearly every other character does, the show repeatedly highlights these parallels in their experiences with Marvin.  In “This Had Better Come to a Stop,” Trina reprises the same “I was supposed to make the dinner” melody that Marvin admonishes Whizzer with at the start of the song.  In the same song, and again later in Act I, Trina and Whizzer “team up” in a way against Marvin, both standing up for themselves in unison.  They don’t precisely act as a united front – in both instances, they don’t stand together but stand on opposite sides of Marvin – but their tactics/grievances are the same.  Whether it’s taunting Marvin with the prospect of other men they prefer to him or reflecting on Marvin put them through (“We had fights and games. / Marvin called us funny names”) and his confounding nature (“And he’s sweet / And he’s mean,”) they sing together.

While the other central relationships in this “triangle” – Marvin-Whizzer and Trina-Marvin – have their share of frustrations for how dysfunctional they can be, the Whizzer-Trina relationship can be frustrating for the potential that’s clearly in it but not fully realized.  It’s such an interesting dynamic, and I wish the show had a lot more of it.  In a way, I think Trina and Whizzer could find a great deal of comfort in commiserating with one another, if they’d allow themselves to do so.