Happy and gay. Which is not the same as gay and happy -- two words that, at least in theater terms, can be as far apart as Pat Buchanan and tolerance. It was 1968, before AIDS, before Torch Song Trilogy, before Stonewall -- and Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band hit the New York theater scene. For a thousand performances at off-Broadway’s Theater Four, seven gay characters gathered at Michael’s New York apartment to celebrate the birthday of their outrageous mutual friend, Harold. Gays and straights in the audience delighted in these wild characters as their in-jokes -- and “out” jokes -- flew with a freedom available to them only within this tight-knit circle.
Rage and pity took hold in act two, though, as Alan hounded an old school chum into admitting his homosexuality. This tragic portrait of gays as social misfits who can’t help themselves, summed up in the final line, “Why can’t we learn to love ourselves just a little more?” all but defined that community for nearly a decade. It wasn’t until Harvey Fierstein arrived with “I just wanna be loved, is that so wrong?” that gays felt good enough about themselves to demand love and respect from others.
So The Boys in the Band was a landmark play for pushing an array of gay men -- from uptight businessmen to flighty fairies -- out of the closet and into the living room. If, three decades later, it’s embarrassing how operatically the piece treats its self-hating screwups, we’re forgiving because now gay men on stage no longer have to stand for all gay men everywhere. What has deflated over 30 years is any illusion that The Boys in the Band is a well-written play. Author Crowley does fine with the set-up and exposition, but he’s positively schizophrenic in dealing with his lead character. At first, Michael seems reasonably comfortable in his own skin, able to blend in with straights but happily indulgent towards more effeminate friends like Emory and Harold. In act two, Michael snaps, turning maliciously against not only a bigoted friend but everyone in the room.
David Drake is an appealing actor, but minute-to-minute we can’t tell whether Michael is fighting for openness or bashing his own people. For all the play‘s breezy repartee, there’s a stiltedness to Kenneth Elliott’s direction, perhaps because he’s mixed realistic performances with highly stylized ones.
David Greenspan’s very funny as the acid-tongued Harold, but he delivers every line in the same lisping, false falsetto. Christopher Sieber is an amiable Donald, but, ironically, his “normal” gay character is given little to do. Important as The Boys in the Band certainly was, the country, and the theater, has moved on.
