Two Saturdays ago, Barney Frank walked onstage at City Center and declared to an empty house: “I’m not a senator, but I play one in the theatre!” It was a loaded ad lib. Three days earlier, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick had appointed William “Mo” Cowan as interim senator, in the seat vacated by John Kerry. This, despite a public bid for the job from Frank, who had just retired from Congress after thirty-two years. Nevertheless, Frank had one last shot at the upper chamber: for one night only, he was making a cameo appearance as a Republican senator in the 1959 musical “Fiorello!”
Backstage, Frank described himself as a longtime fan of the musical, which charts Fiorello LaGuardia’s rise from lawyer to congressman to Mayor of New York City. (Encores!, which stages short runs of rarely seen musicals, was producing the event.) He recited some lyrics from “The Bum Won,” sung after LaGuardia is elected to the House from New York’s twentieth district:
“I cited that about the 2010 election,” Frank said, recalling the Tea Party’s rise to power. In graduate school, he had read Arthur Mann’s book on LaGuardia in Congress and become an ardent admirer. “He was kind of a loner,” Frank went on. “He would sit on the floor eating peanuts, because he knew if he left to get something to eat they’d pull some trick on him. And then as Mayor he was also a very progressive guy. Not much of a civil libertarian. That bothered me. There was one famous quote where he said to his police commissioner, ‘Muss ’em up, Lew.’”
He empathized with LaGuardia as an “outsider”—an Italian half-Jew who spoke up for immigrants’ rights. “I knew I was gay at the time, but I wasn’t talking about it,” Frank recalled. At the airport bearing LaGuardia’s name, Frank had noticed a mural commemorating the dedication of the Marine Air Terminal: “It’s on my literal birthday: March 31st, 1940.” Frank’s role in “Fiorello!” was a senator who chides LaGuardia for being too vocal in the House, something he has had some experience with. “When the original Don’t Ask Don’t Tell went through, I insisted on an amendment to object,” Frank said. “I remember some of the Democratic leadership saying, ‘Do you have to?’ ‘Yes, I have to.’”
Sitting nearby was his husband, Jim Ready, a goateed surfing enthusiast, whom he married last summer. Since Frank’s retirement the couple has been catching up on lost time. “Jim is a very good surfer,” Frank said. “He surfs in Maine year-round with various set of flippers and wet suits. From the deck of our house you can see the ocean. He can check the waves. And he’s also a great snowboarder. I have lecture fees and I told the agent, ‘I’m sure there are places that want to hear me speak that are close to surfing and snowboards!’” Surfing, like politics, can make strange bedfellows; Ready recently caught some waves with a conservative congressman from Orange County.
Frank went onstage to rehearse his scene with Danny Rutigliano, the appropriately diminutive actor playing LaGuardia. As the staff vacuumed down the aisles, Frank read from a highlighted script: “‘Congressman! Thanks for letting me intrude upon you at this time. I understand you’re very busy.’”
“‘Trying to earn my money,’” Rutigliano, who was wearing a fedora, said.
“‘I’ve heard some of my colleagues call you the Little Flower. What is that?’ ”
“‘My name: Fiorello. That’s what it means!’ ”
The director, Gary Griffin, moved them slightly downstage. “‘You’ve been very active in things in Washington, Congressman LaGuardia,’“ Frank continued. “‘That’s as it should be. But as you undoubtedly know, there’s an unwritten law, a piece of cherished etiquette, that a freshman member doesn’t speak on the floor of the House during his first term.’”
“‘Yes I’ve heard of that,’” Rutigliano said. “‘It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? The pacifists are poisoning the thought of the country, Senator. They have to be answered. Breaking a rule of etiquette is a small price for the House to pay.’”
“‘But the House won’t pay, my dear LaGuardia,’” Frank said, jutting out his index finger. “‘You’ll pay.’ ”
They finished the scene and then ran through it once more, as Griffin tweaked their blocking. “Now, Barney,” Griffin said, “are you going to watch the second act or do you want to take a bow with our company?”
“Let me ask you,” Frank said, “this is a play about what?”
“LaGuardia,” Griffin said, confused.
“And he was a congressman?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve immersed yourself in this?” Frank said.
“Yeah?” Griffin said, now seeming alarmed.
Frank grinned: “And you’re asking a congressman if he wants to take a bow?”
Showtime.
Photograph by Walter McBride/Broadway World.
