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Sexuality takes twists, turns on cable

Last Updated: May 21, 2003

Television Joanne Weintraub E-MAIL  |  ARCHIVE

"Welcome to the other side of the looking glass, Alice," the title character says to her boyfriend in "Soldier's Girl."

She's talking about the world of cross-dressing and transsexuality, a hall of mirrors where things - and people - are not always what they seem to be.

The networks may find this androgynous mirror-world too exotic for prime time, but cable TV isn't afraid to visit it.

Too Exotic for Prime Time 'Tipping the Velvet' Keeley Hawes (left) and Rachael Stirling are male impersonators in love in "Tipping the Velvet." When to Watch What: "Tipping the Velvet" When: 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday Where: BBC America 'Soldier's Girl' Lee Pace (left) and Troy Garity share an unconventional, doomed love in "Soldier's Girl" on Showtime. When to Watch What: "Soldier's Girl" When: 8 p.m. May 31 Where: Showtime

In March, HBO aired the fine "Normal," with Tom Wilkinson as a mild Midwesterner who stuns his wife, played by Jessica Lange, when he tells her he wants a sex change.

In June, which is Gay Pride Month, Cinemax will air "All About My Father" (June 11) and "No Dumb Questions" (June 18), two documentaries about family men who undergo sex changes.

"P.O.V.," a public-TV documentary series with a cable-TV sensibility, will offer "Georgie Girl" (June 20), a portrait of a transsexual New Zealand politician who represents a largely rural, conservative constituency.

This week and next, BBC America goes behind the looking glass with "Tipping the Velvet," set in 1890s London, while Showtime's "Soldier's Girl" makes gripping drama out of a real-life 1999 incident.

"Tipping the Velvet"

"Velvet" tells the fictional story of Nan Astley (Rachael Stirling), a working-class girl whose life is transformed when she falls in love with Kitty Butler (Keeley Hawes), a fetching male impersonator.

Nan is as enthralled by Kitty's bold self-assurance - a trait not exactly encouraged in Victorian women - as by the dashing figure she cuts in trousers. Soon after the flattered, flirtatious Kitty asks Nan to become her backstage dresser, their mutual attraction yields to a full-blown love affair.

But the course of true love never did run smooth, especially not in a three-hour miniseries.

Before Nan lives happily ever after, she will become a male impersonator herself, first on the stage and then on the streets London as a "boy" prostitute; live as the mistress of a rich, willful lesbian dominatrix, Diana (Anna Chancellor); and yearn desperately for the good woman, Florence (Jodhi May), whom she doesn't think she can have.

"Tipping the Velvet" earns its TV-MA rating with lesbian love scenes that are frank but not exploitive and glimpses of the 19th-century underworld that "Masterpiece Theatre" can only hint at.

Diana's milieu in particular - a world of wealthy, powerful, randy women where Victorian stereotypes are shattered along with the flung wine glasses - is re-created with a daring sensuality.

If the production has a serious flaw, it's that Nan, as played by the rather opaque Stirling (the daughter, incidentally, of Diana Rigg), is not easy to like. She seems less human than the outrageously charming Kitty, the gentle Florence or even the imperious, hot-blooded Diana.

Even Stirling's mask-like makeup works against her. When Nan weeps, she doesn't look particularly distressed; when she's struck savagely on the face, she appears to bleed red ink.

"Soldier's Girl"

In "Soldier's Girl," on the other hand, the main characters' humanity is never in doubt. Even the minor cast members give robust performances - and the two stars give riveting ones.

All-American boy Barry Winchell (Troy Garity, the son of another diva, Jane Fonda) is a soldier with the "Screaming Eagles," the proudly all-male 101st Airborne Division. Something of a loner, he tries to keep a distance from his alternately playful and hostile roommate, Justin Fisher (Shawn Hatosy).

Justin, a self-described "maniac" who's always looking for boundaries to push, takes Barry and some other buddies to a local club that specializes in female impersonators. The men become intrigued with the seductive Calpernia (Lee Pace), and Barry is goaded into going to her dressing room.

The unconventional romance that flowers between Calpernia and Barry echoes the one between Kitty and Nan in "Tipping the Velvet," but this time there's no happy ending.

In July 1999, the real-life Winchell was beaten to death with a baseball bat by a drunken fellow soldier, who later testified that Fisher, also drunk, had put a baseball bat in his hands and urged him to attack Winchell.

Though Barry is the story's tragic hero, Calpernia - once a male soldier, now a pre-operative transsexual and an entertainer - is its catalyst.

In Pace, a young actor not long out of Juilliard, the filmmakers have found an extraordinarily believable love interest. His Calpernia is beautiful and even womanly, yet with an empathy for Barry that clearly comes from her own past life.

Though Nan and Kitty's fictional story is separated by a century and an ocean from Barry and Calpernia's true one, the two dramas share a fascination with gender roles and a sympathy for those who feel trapped by them.

The extreme and eventually deadly machismo portrayed in "Soldier's Girl" is the flip side of the soul-numbing hyperfemininity imposed on Victorian women in "Tipping the Velvet." In both cases, one alternative is to embrace androgyny - but it's a choice that imposes costs of its own.

E-mail Joanne Weintraub at jweintraub@journalsentinel.com.