Forty two years and a whole different era ago, Matt Crowley’s groundbreaking play “The Boys in the Band,” opened in New York – that was 14 months before Stonewall, 14 years before we became AIDS attentive, and 30 years before “Will and Grace” made use of similar stereotypes for the peacock network.
It wasn’t the first gay play by any means. “The Children’s Hour” opened in 1933 and “The Killing of Sister George” in 1964, but those lesbian themed productions were basically tragedies where people died for their sins.
“The Boys” was comedy filled with laugh-out-loud oneliners. Yes, they were zingers with a sting, but a mainstream audience found it an enjoyable romp on the other side of the street. It was a soldout sensation, attracting a cross-over audience. No less a flag-waving, Republican-voting icon than Bob Hope attended and recommended it to others. It became the thing to see and was made into a successful 1970 film directed by William Friedkin (“The French Connection,” “The Exorcist”), the first American mainstream movie to revolve around gay characters.
But in the 1980s it became fashionable to treat this play as something of an embarrassment, the equivalent of a gay minstrel show where the unhappy homosexuals strut and do their stuff for the amusement of the straight folks.
Now that gay liberation has been around for a generation and even the Republican Party is beginning to make nice, the play is being revived in more ways than one. In March of this year a production opened in New York in an actual penthouse apartment where the audience was treated like guests to the birthday party that forms the focus of the evening.
And for the first time in over two decades, a fully staged production is being produced in Fort Lauderdale by the Rising Action Theatre at their new location in the Sunshine Cathedral complex.
The director is Michael Leeds, who wrote and directed the Broadway musical “Swinging On A Star.” The cast are mainly new to the Rising Action Theatre, but have a lot of stage experience elsewhere. There’s the refreshing alteration of having Larry and Hank played by Hispanic actors, a change that’s nicely integrated into the play by Leeds.
”The Boys in the Band” is a genuine ensemble piece, meaning the roles are interdependent and you need all nine of the actors to rise to a certain level for the production to work effectively.
I caught one of the first performances where the acting was very uneven and the cast hadn’t yet clicked as a group, but that could certainly improve as it continues its run.
For actors and the director, Crowley’s play demands a careful balancing act between scenes that are outrageously funny and ones that are painfully poignant. When I saw it, these actors were doing better with the laughs than the pathos, a situation that led to some jarring moments.
Is this play dated? There are popculture references that those under 50 may not get (Rosemary DeCamp anyone?), but if you think these characters and their dilemmas don’t exist in 2010, then tune into the reality show “The A List” on the Logo channel any Monday night and you’ll see that Michael, Harold, Emory and even Cowboy are alive and still bitchin’ away in New York City. Talk about embarrassments!
Matt Crowley never matched the success of his first play, but in 2002 he did write a sequel entitled “The Men From the Boys,” which picks up the same characters 30 years later. SPOILER ALERT: As the first play revolved around a birthday party, the sequel is a wake for Larry, the promiscuous fashion photographer who was in a tumultuous relationship with Hank the schoolteacher. Michael is still the host, still miserable, and still in debt, but laying off the booze. It’s his best friend Donald who now has that problem. Harold shows up late again and brings a blond “actor/ dancer/ waiter” as his date to the funeral. Bernard, “The African Queen,” is the most contented of the lot, and Emory is still slinging the outrageous one-liners (“The one good thing about Alzheimer’s is that you get to hide your own Easter eggs”).
Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7p.m. through Dec. 12 at Rising Action Theatre, Sunshine Cathedral located at 1480 SW Ninth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at by calling 1-800-595-4849, or visit www.risingactiontheatre.com.
