The Boys in the Band (play)
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- For an article about the film adaptation, see The Boys in the Band.
| The Boys in the Band | |
 Poster for the 1996 off-Broadway revival |
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| Written by | Mart Crowley |
|---|---|
| Date of premiere | April 14, 1968 |
| Original language | English |
The Boys in the Band is a play by Mart Crowley.
It is set in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where six of Harold's closest friends are throwing him a birthday party. One of Harold's presents is "Cowboy", an attractive but obviously unintelligent male prostitute, since Harold, increasingly morose about losing his youthful looks, claims he no longer can attract cute young men. The other characters are Michael, the host and a lapsed Roman Catholic alcoholic undergoing psychoanalysis; Donald, a conflicted friend who has moved from the city to spurn the homosexual lifestyle; Bernard, an African-American who still pines for the wealthy white boy in the house where his mother worked as a maid; Emory, who is extremely flamboyant and the most stereotypical of the group; and Larry and Hank, a couple living together but disagreeing on the issue of monogamy. An unexpected party guest is Alan, Michael's allegedly straight college friend, who is in town and anxious to tell Michael something -- but hesitant to do so when he sees the group. During the party the self-deprecating humor takes a nasty turn as the nine men become increasingly inebriated. The party culminates in a game where each man must call someone and tell him he loves him. Michael, believing that Alan has finally "outed" himself when he makes his call, is stunned to discover it is Alan's wife on the line when he grabs the phone away from Alan. The audience never learns what Alan intended to discuss with Michael, but is left with the possibility that his decision to reveal his homosexuality was averted by his repulsion for the behavior he witnessed throughout the evening.
The Boys in the Band is bitter, bitchy, and scathing in the tradition of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Bette Davis film All About Eve. According to Crowley's friend Gavin Lambert, actress Natalie Wood, who sympathized with Hollywood's gay scene, financially supported Crowley, himself a homosexual, so he would be free to write his play.[1] The playwright, who first met her while working as a production assistant on the movie Splendor in the Grass, worked as an assistant for Wood and her husband Robert Wagner for many years.
The off-Broadway production, directed by Robert Moore, opened on April 14, 1968 at Theater Four,[2] where it ran for 1000 performances, an extremely healthy run for both an off-Broadway production and one not geared to a mainstream audience. The cast included Kenneth Nelson as Michael, Peter White as Alan, Leonard Frey as Harold, Cliff Gorman as Emory, Frederick Combs as Donald, Laurence Luckinbill as Hank, Keith Prentice as Larry, Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy, and Reuben Greene as Bernard.
In 1970, it was adapted into a successful motion picture directed by William Friedkin. The play had a brief revival at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1996.[2]
In 2002, a sequel entitled The Men from the Boys premiered in San Francisco,[3] and was produced in Los Angeles the following year.[4]
[edit] Album
In 1969 a 2-lp vinyl set was released. It contained the full dialogue of the play as voiced by the original actors.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Jaques, Damien (1998-05-31). 'Boys in Band' returns to stage, tamer now but still honest, witty. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved on 2007-03-27.
- ^ a b Lortel Archives listing. Retrieved on 2007-03-27.
- ^ Roca, Octavio (2002-10-26). 'Boys' to 'Men': Mart Crowley's latest play takes 'Boys in the Band' through the past 30 years. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-03-27.
- ^ Hitchcock, Laura (2003-08-03). Men From the Boys. CurtainUp.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-27.
[edit] References
- Natalie Wood: A Life by Gavin Lambert, published by Backstage Books, April 2005 (ISBN 0-82308829-4)
