Falsettos Tickets

Falsettos is set in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It centers around the story of a neurotic man named Marvin who falls in love with a man named Whizzer and decides to leave his wife, Trina, and young son, Jason. Jason wrestles with his parent’s divorce and having a gay father, while Marvin navigates his relationships with Trina and Whizzer. The whole family learns to embrace love with the support of their lesbian neighbors. Come laugh, cry, and fall in love with Falsettos.

Falsettos brings two one-act musicals by James Lapine and Willian Finn, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, together in one show. March of the Falsettos premiered in 1981 at Playwrights Horizons in New York City. In 1990, the story of Marvin, Whizzer, Trina, and Jason continued in Falsettoland, which also premiered at Playwrights Horizons. In 1992, Falsettos premiered at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway.

A revival production of Falsettos opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 2016. The production was recorded for a PBS broadcast premiere, which aired a year later on October 27, 2017. The musical revival received five Tony Award nominations and three Drama Desk Award nominations, as well as several Outer Critics Circle and Drama League nominations in 2017.

What to Watch For

• Writer and lyricist William Finn shared that a possible title for March of the Falsettos was “Four Jews in a Room Bitching.” Rather than becoming the title for the one-act musical, it became the title for the opening song of Falsettos.
• The musical’s time period brings audiences back to the late 1970s at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Although the audience is aware of the auto-immune disease that Whizzer battles in the musical, the characters are confused by his medical complications, as AIDS was still a mystery even to medical professionals at the time.
• Falsettos directly addressed the cultural debate at the time of the musical’s debut. There was a call for “family values,” which fought against homosexual marriage and rights for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. However, political tides had shifted by the 2016 musical’s revival, which hit Broadway less than a year after same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015.
• Even though the two acts of Falsettos were written nearly a decade apart, the acts are meant to only span three years, from 1979 to 1981. The two acts themselves have different tones — the opening act is riddled with comedy, while the closing act is defined by tragedy.