| My review of THE BOYS IN THE BAND: Mart Crowley seminal play makes it to Broadway after 50 years | |
| Posted by: jesse21 09:13 am EDT 05/31/18 | |
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| - Director Joe Mantello and his company of nine ace actors are breathing new life into Mart Crowley's once startling The Boys in the Band which is finally being revived on Broadway after 50 years of both triumph and revilement. Back in 1968, the play depicted a birthday party at a Manhattan apartment celebrated by homosexual men, a demographic not exactly seen so nakedly on the legitimate stage before. Mr. Crowley's work became famous for its characters' bitchy humor and self-loathing. Only about a year later, the Stonewall riots for gay rights already began to made his work passé. But leave it to Mr. Mantello, currently riding high with a revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women down the block, to turn The Boys in the Band into something more than an artifact. Oh, he doesn't update it at all, although he and Mr. Crowley, now nearing the ripe age of 83, have edited the text, bringing the running time at the Booth Theatre, where the play opens tonight, to 110 intermission-less minutes. What the director and the actors have accomplished is discovering a lot more nuance, complexity and humanity in characters so often viewed as stereotypes from the past. So watching, you are aware that this play is depicting a particular time and place of a half-century ago, and yet you can't help making comparisons to life in Trump's America. On one hand, you wonder what these gay men would make of Stonewall, the AIDS epidemic, marriage equality or even Grindr.. You even imagine that they'd probably think a movie like this year's Love, Simon about a gay high-schooler is pure fantasy. Or that Pope Francis's recent comment to a gay man, "God made you that way and loves you as you are.", was an ironic joke. On the other hand, you watch and ponder if the scene you see on stage is essentially being played out pretty much the same today among LGBT communities in Red States across the U.S. where the closet door hasn't opened as widely as it has in urban areas. And could potentially shut tight given the political climate. The performances contribute significantly to viewing the play as having more depth than you previously might have thought. This is especially true of the three more complex characters. As Michael, the host of the party, Jim Parsons has the star quality that commands the stage and also anchors this play. He's excellent in depicting how Michael's put-on sophistication gradually falls away until he utters the play's most-quoted line: ""Show me a happy homosexual, and I'll show you a gay corpse." Zachary Quinto, as birthday boy Harold, adds layers to the zingers and self-laceration ("I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world."), and actually makes you believe that this handsome actor is as unattractive as his character claims. As the flamboyant Emory ("I may be nelly, but I'm no coward."), Robin De Jesús is funny and later heartbreaking when he picks up the telephone to play Michael's party game of calling the one person you truly believe you have loved and then confess your deepest feelings. Mr. De Jesús does a lot to mask the contrivances of the writing here. Among the other six actors are the well-known Matt Bomer as Donald in a Broadway debut and Andrew Rannells as Larry. They are very good too but their roles are more limited. (The production, by the way, promotes the fact that all of the actors are openly gay.) The second half of the play — after Harold arrives and the characters begin to play Michael's telephone game — has been compared as analogous to the "Hump the Hostess" and "Get the Guests" alcohol-fueled gamesmanship in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And, yes, you do think that Mr. Crowley borrowed from Edward Albee. I also feel he had in mind a Noël Coward drawing-room comedy when he wrote the first half which is essentially a comedy of manners. Did Mr. Crowley pen his version of what two famous gay playwrights might have written if they could at the time? Perhaps. My only disappointment with the current production is David Zinn's two-level, red-on-red set. It is both a realistic and symbolic design that put me at a distance. There is something about the play that makes the audience feel like a fly on the wall that is perhaps best accomplished with a detailed naturalistic environment. The ultimate staging in this regard was the Transport Group’s site-specific revival in 2010 that was presented inside an actual Manhattan loft apartment. That aside, this Boys in the Band is highly entertaining and surprisingly thought-provoking. ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ - Jesse SIDEBAR: THE BOYS IN THE BAND opens Thursday, May 31, 2018, at the Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, New York City. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. No intermission. Limited engagement. Tickets currently on sale through August 11, 2018. Link to website. - |
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