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The Boys in the Band
It's been in previews for a month, and will open at the end of the week. But everyone is talking about the first Broadway production of Mart Crowley's landmark 1968 play The Boys in the Band.
The production is the dream of gay producer Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Glee, American Horror Story) who has assembled a cast of all out gay actors. This was a risky move, as I will explain later if you are unfamiliar with the material, but the word of mouth over the last week has been great. With these stars it's a limited run - just over the summer until million-dollar-an-episode Jim Parsons has to report back for work on The Big Bang Theory.
The Story
The play centers on Michael (Jim Parsons) who is throwing a birthday party for his friend Harold (Zachary Quinto) and six of their friends. There are some unexpected guests - Cowboy (Charlie Carver), a young hustler arrives as a present for Harold, and Michael's straight college buddy, Alan (Brian Hutchison), drops in on this inconvenient evening distraught and needing to talk to Michael privately. This breaks the invisible barrier Michael has put up between his straight and gay friends, and he (and everyone else) grows more drunk and passive-aggressive as the evening goes on - especially Harold who arrives late to his own party with verbal barbs for everyone.
Theater Talk: Looking Back at The Boys in the Band[/URL] - Playwright Mart Crowley, actor Laurence Luckinbill and commentator Michael Musto of "The Village Voice" discuss the inspiration behind "The Boys in The Band" -Crowley's landmark 1967 drama on the LGBT rights movement of today.
History: Boys
There have been a good number of ground- breaking gay plays - Angels in America, The Normal Heart, Bent, A Beautiful Thing. But there is only one that was the first to pull back the curtain and put contemporary urban gay lives on stage, not as comic relief but as real human beings that love, laugh, and fear. Boys in the Band opened in April 1968 at the 99 seat off-Broadway Theater Four and caused a cultural shock wave.
The time was right, or at least right enough, and influential people flocked to the small theater to see what gay people finally had to say about themselves. Some were shocked. Some realized the humanity that they themselves had denied their gay friends. And some gay men saw themselves and vowed never to return to the self-hating insular world of the underground again. They were determined to live openly and demand respect.
It's hard to pull the influence of the play away from it's times. The title comes from the line in the movie A Star is Born when James Mason tells Judy Garland not to be nervous and just sing like she does after hours when it's just her "and the boys in the band".
During the run of the play Judy Garland died, and days later the Stonewall uprising shocked the city and birthed a community and a movement. And part of what people wanted to move away from was the insular hidden subculture and barely tolerated second-class citizen status that was on display in the Boys in the Band.
Like that other 1968 cultural breakthrough, Hair, Boys didn't seem to age well and most considered the play unproducable. But 50 years is enough distance to remove some of the threat. Lord knows these sometimes feel like dark days, but whatever happens, we are not going back to dinner parties where vent our hate and frustration on our friends.
The boys in this play are trying to survive in a world that tells them they are worthless deviants. They are struggling but the fact that they are stepping up and owning who they are and who they love takes a bravery most of us now can't imagine. I think it's time they were celebrated.
The Boys in the Band (1970) Full Movie - The 1970 film was done with the full original cast.
Time has also taken its toll on this landmark. Most of the gay members of the cast died during the AIDS epidemic. Cliff Gorman (Emory) recently passed away, but Laurence Luckinbill (husband of Lucie Arnez) is still around and did the Theater Talk interview listed above.
The Broadway revival opens tomorrow night.
For more information
Getting Ready For...
It's been in previews for a month, and will open at the end of the week. But everyone is talking about the first Broadway production of Mart Crowley's landmark 1968 play The Boys in the Band.
The production is the dream of gay producer Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Glee, American Horror Story) who has assembled a cast of all out gay actors. This was a risky move, as I will explain later if you are unfamiliar with the material, but the word of mouth over the last week has been great. With these stars it's a limited run - just over the summer until million-dollar-an-episode Jim Parsons has to report back for work on The Big Bang Theory.
The Story
The play centers on Michael (Jim Parsons) who is throwing a birthday party for his friend Harold (Zachary Quinto) and six of their friends. There are some unexpected guests - Cowboy (Charlie Carver), a young hustler arrives as a present for Harold, and Michael's straight college buddy, Alan (Brian Hutchison), drops in on this inconvenient evening distraught and needing to talk to Michael privately. This breaks the invisible barrier Michael has put up between his straight and gay friends, and he (and everyone else) grows more drunk and passive-aggressive as the evening goes on - especially Harold who arrives late to his own party with verbal barbs for everyone.
Theater Talk: Looking Back at The Boys in the Band[/URL] - Playwright Mart Crowley, actor Laurence Luckinbill and commentator Michael Musto of "The Village Voice" discuss the inspiration behind "The Boys in The Band" -Crowley's landmark 1967 drama on the LGBT rights movement of today.
History: Boys
There have been a good number of ground- breaking gay plays - Angels in America, The Normal Heart, Bent, A Beautiful Thing. But there is only one that was the first to pull back the curtain and put contemporary urban gay lives on stage, not as comic relief but as real human beings that love, laugh, and fear. Boys in the Band opened in April 1968 at the 99 seat off-Broadway Theater Four and caused a cultural shock wave.
The time was right, or at least right enough, and influential people flocked to the small theater to see what gay people finally had to say about themselves. Some were shocked. Some realized the humanity that they themselves had denied their gay friends. And some gay men saw themselves and vowed never to return to the self-hating insular world of the underground again. They were determined to live openly and demand respect.
It's hard to pull the influence of the play away from it's times. The title comes from the line in the movie A Star is Born when James Mason tells Judy Garland not to be nervous and just sing like she does after hours when it's just her "and the boys in the band".
During the run of the play Judy Garland died, and days later the Stonewall uprising shocked the city and birthed a community and a movement. And part of what people wanted to move away from was the insular hidden subculture and barely tolerated second-class citizen status that was on display in the Boys in the Band.
Like that other 1968 cultural breakthrough, Hair, Boys didn't seem to age well and most considered the play unproducable. But 50 years is enough distance to remove some of the threat. Lord knows these sometimes feel like dark days, but whatever happens, we are not going back to dinner parties where vent our hate and frustration on our friends.
The boys in this play are trying to survive in a world that tells them they are worthless deviants. They are struggling but the fact that they are stepping up and owning who they are and who they love takes a bravery most of us now can't imagine. I think it's time they were celebrated.
The Boys in the Band (1970) Full Movie - The 1970 film was done with the full original cast.
Time has also taken its toll on this landmark. Most of the gay members of the cast died during the AIDS epidemic. Cliff Gorman (Emory) recently passed away, but Laurence Luckinbill (husband of Lucie Arnez) is still around and did the Theater Talk interview listed above.
The Broadway revival opens tomorrow night.
For more information
- Boys In The Band (1970) - Making The Film - Behind the scenes on making the movie with interviews with most of the actors and creatives.
- The Boys in the Band playwright Mart Crowley talks about his play, the movie, and the revival - Erin Moriarty interviews playwright Mart Crowley, whose groundbreaking 1968 play "The Boys in the Band," about a group of gay men attending a birthday party, is now on Broadway in a revival starring Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto.
- Matt Bomer talks about the play and dealing with being naked on stage - Matt Bomer chats about bringing his 13-year-old son to the Tony Awards, and antics with Andrew Rannells during his Broadway show, The Boys in the Band, and he reveals how forgetting to check his props left him naked onstage.
- Fresh Face: Charlie Carver of The Boys in the Band - Charlie Carver (Teen Wolf, I Am Michael, When We Rise) is as cute as they come, but he dedicates his performance to his late father who was also gay and found his way through some of the same issues faced by the characters in the play.
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