Bella Bella, Harvey Fierstein’s new one-person off-Broadway bioplay/valentine to New York political dynamo Bella Abzug, takes place in 1976, as Abzug attempted (in vain) to become the state’s first female senator. (She lost a five-way primary race, by less than 1%, to former Nixon adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) But the issues she fought sound a heck of a lot like 2019.
Here’s Bella—played by Fierstein —on electability: “When I started this whole Senatorial campaign a pollster handed me a survey and was surprised when I threw it back in his face. ‘Would you vote for a woman if she was qualified?’ Now why the hell does a woman have to be qualified when a man only has to be a man?” (Oh, what Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar would make of that one!)
Bella on deceptive appearances: “FDR: I know, you saw that movie Sunrise at Campobello with him rolling around in his wheelchair and thought, ‘What a nice guy.’ And he did appoint the first female cabinet member but, for nearly six years, 1938 to ’44, he did almost nothing to stop the Holocaust. Eleanor begged him, ‘Open the borders,’ but, because of the Depression, his political life depended on economic recovery not rescuing Jews, so…So much for your Mr. Nice guy.”
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
Bella on the fragile male ego: “Harry Truman; a man so thin skinned that he demanded a loyalty oath from everyone who worked for him. Can you imagine a President demanding a loyalty oath from the very people HE was elected to serve?” And can you imagine the bitter laughter that line generates?
If you don’t know much about Bella Abzug—and I’ll admit that I knew only a few bullet points—Fierstein manages to pack quite a bit into 90 or so minutes: her landside write-in victory for third-grade class president; her rejection from Harvard Law School (“So I wrote them a nice letter. And they wrote me a nice letter back, ‘We don’t accept women.’”); her trademark hat (“And when I got to Congress they made such a tsimis over that stupid hat”); her famous opposition to the Vietnam War; her awe of meeting Robert Kennedy, followed by her indescribable hurt over his assassination; the reaction to the announcement of her first congressional run (“Even Gloria Steinem said, ‘I don’t want you to get hurt. People are so mean in politics.’ Mean? What is this; High School?”); campaigning at the Continental Baths (“An entire room of men all wearing nothing but towels held up by BELLA buttons. Some of them not wearing towels. Just buttons.”); her two-year stint working on a death penalty case in 1940s Mississippi (“Death threats were my daily greeting.… Restaurants wouldn’t serve me food. Hotels wouldn’t rent me a room.”).
The idea of Fierstein, or any man for that matter, playing Abzug might be jarring, but frankly—it works. And it would work just as well with other actors as Bella too. (Tovah Feldshuh, anyone?) The beautiful thing about Bella Bella is its timing: a fiercely intelligent, outspoken woman fighting for equal rights, civil rights, and abortion rights, blazing her own political trail and creating a legacy that future generations can admire and emulate? We can never see too many of those.
Bella Bella opened Oct. 22, 2019, and runs through Dec. 1 at New York City Center–Stage I. Tickets and information: bellabellaplay.com
