“What I am, Michael, is a 32-year-old, ugly, pock-marked Jew fairy, and if it takes me a little while to pull myself together, and if I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it’s nobody’s goddamn business but my own. And how are you this evening?”
Will the 15-week revival of Mark Crowley’s The Boys In The Band devolve into a Rocky Horror-esque exercise in audience participation, with generations of gay men stridently shouting every line of the play out loud? We hope not.
The 50th anniversary finds a lion’s den of gay actors at the helm of the classic bitch-fest: Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, and Andrew Rannells. Co-stars will include Robin de Jesus, Brian Hutchison, Michael Benjamin Washington and Tuc Watkins. The 50th anniversary production will be directed by Joe Mantello at the Booth Theatre.
Related: The cast of the Broadway revival of “Boys in the Band” is a spectacularly gay fever dream
Below, you can watch the cast participate in a photoshoot and talk about the play’s significance.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Here’s what producers want audience members to know right off the bat:
After the drinks are poured and the music turned up, the evening slowly exposes the fault-lines beneath their friendships and the self-inflicted heartache that threatens their solidarity. A true theatrical game-changer, The Boys in the Band helped spark a revolution by putting gay men’s lives onstage — unapologetically and without judgement – in a world that was not yet willing to fully accept them.
“The significance of The Boys in the Band cannot be underestimated. In 1968, Mart Crowley made theatrical history by giving voice to gay men onstage, in this uncompromising, blisteringly honest, and wickedly funny play,” said Ryan Murphy. “The play was groundbreaking in its exploration of how gay men treated each other and how they were made to feel about themselves. And while some attitudes have thankfully shifted, it’s important to be reminded of what we have overcome and how much further we still have to go.”
David Stone adds, “Everything has changed. And nothing has changed.”
A sensation when it premiered in April 1968, The Boys in the Band was originally scheduled to run for five performances at the Playwrights’ Unit, a small off-Broadway venue. Overnight, the show became the talk of the town for its unflinchingly honest depiction of gay life, and transferred to Theater Four on West 55th Street, drawing the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Marlene Dietrich, Groucho Marx, and Rudolf Nureyev, among many others. The play went on to run for over 1,000 performances. The entire original company performed the show to great acclaim in London and also appeared in William Friedkin’s landmark 1970 film version.
Watch:
Goforit
Is it just me or is Matt Bomer getting younger? He looked about 18 in this clip.
Greg
It’s just you. It is impossible for anybody to get younger.
Alan down in Florida
Hopefully they will film it for PBS because that’s the only way I’ll get to see it. Was 14 when it originally played so I never saw it until I watched it on YouTube in my 60s and was astonished at how effing funny it was in places.
tiffanyberry545
as Annie replied I didn’t even know that any one able to earn $8091 in four weeks on the
computer . why not check here…
9999
gaym50ish
Although it starts out funny, it eventually gets very heavy. And that’s its appeal, I guess. It speaks to how much fun it is to be gay and how it’s sometimes tragic too. I have the movie on VHS and have watched it a hundred times.
Juanjo
I never saw the stage production but I did see the movie, twice. Once when it first came out and again a couple years ago. Both times it was difficult to watch but not for exactly the same reason. As Parsons notes – it is a good shot of where we once were and to some extent where we still are.
dwes09
It is where some were, not where we all were, certainly not where i was when I finally came out in 1971. When I moved to California in 1972, relatives here told me stories of their years in the communist party in the 1940’s and 50’s and two men (who they did not know i had met at their plant nursery) who had turned the local “cell” upside down by falling in love and apologetically demanding the same respect for their love as the heterosexuals. The two were legendary in the horticultural community for the Sebastopol nursery they owned until their deaths.
OzJosh
Amazing cast. It’s a shame that their star-power is being employed to paper over what is essentially a very dated play that is now only really of interest as a museum piece. You can try and pretend it still has something worthwhile or relevant to say, but it’s really just a wallow in a sad past with a bunch of pretty unsavoury characters.
chris33133
When I saw the movie, what struck me was how self-loathing the men seemed; and how they washed that loathing onto one another. I grew up during that time; and yes, this was unapologetic. However, it was also angst ridden. I prefer today when gay friends get together and, instead of tearing one another down, they actually support each other.
DuMaurier
Yeah, but that might make a pretty boring play. There’s always been a significant body of opinion that says “Boys” is a negative, counter-productive portrait of gay men, but I think it’s historically important and worth reviving. When it was first staged it was also one of the few representations of gay life, and that’s fortunately not true at all anymore.
Greg
Well then you got something from it. You know how not to be. Although, I’m sure when a gaggle of gay guys get together, it’s not all nice and proper.
dwes09
The film was released when I was 19. Though I was out to some friends and no longer a virgin it kept me largely in the closet for another year. Those people, their mannerisms, their back biting, their pitiful nature was not me. Seeing this depicted as the lives of those in the gay community was a huge setback. My straight friends loved it. They were fine with the idea of gay liberation, but it made them happy to be able to see that those they thought of as “real” gay people were intrinsically damaged and unlikely to ever share the same level of satisfaction in their lives. When i finally came out to everybody but my parents and brother in 1971, it was a huge setback for one friend who unbeknownst to me had been forced into conversion therapy by his parents under threat of being disowned.
I’ve no love for that movie or for Mart Crowley who presented the straight image of the disordered homosexual personality as the truth. They ate it up and reveled in the pity it afforded them the privilege to feel for us.
I don’t believe in censorship, but it is a misguided theatrical dinosaur that deserves to be buried in the dustbin of regressive culture. Or at least directed to make clear the conceptual lies it contains.
chris33133
Precisely!
PSGuy5
I agree! This was a very damaging film for gays struggling to deal with their sexuality back in 1970. Growing up in the conservative Midwest, it was the only depiction of gay men I had seen up to that point. I remember thinking that being a homosexual must be miserable and this can’t be me.
dwes09
Interesting that Friedkin, who directed the film also directed Cruising which depicted homosexuality and particularly the leather community as likely to turn even someone who starts out heterosexual into a gay serial killer.
He must have found The Boys in the Band a perfect vehicle for his distaste for gays.
ladycookie
oh, please, Friedkin cast half the leather community in the Meatpacking District in the Village for his club scenes In Cruising. If he really had distaste for gays, he would have stayed far away from the poppers and slings that he eventually employed for those scenes. I guess Friedkin had a distaste for demons as well since he also directed The Exorcist? The Boys in the Band is still a fun, witty romp — I’ve seen it countless times. Playwright Mart Crowley himself said that he merely wrote about his group of friends around him at the time. Should we never explore what life was like pre-Stonewall lest you call it a dinosaur? I’m sorry you can’t laugh along with us after all these years.
DCguy
I wonder if they will update it all or if it will be word for word a reproduction.
Kangol
The Boys in the Band is a historical relic, but I’d pay to see all of these openly gay contemporary actors in it.
queerbec
A historical relic? Nonsense. In the right hands (and Joe Mantello’s are among the best in the business), TBITB can remind us of a time in which self-loathing and familial and societal discrimination were foisted onto the LGTB community. It did seem like we lived in a parallel universe or underground like in the catacombs. It first appeared two years before Stonewall so our community’s awareness that we could stand up for ourselves and become an activist power was only beginning to be acknowledged and implemented. You can feel the beginning of such an awareness in Crowley’s play through the catty remarks and game playing that reveal the stirrings of an “I ain’t gonna take this anymore. Remember it was the Emory’s of our world who were among those who joined the drag queens in throwing the first garbage cans,
Greg
I love the movie. Almost every line is quotable and funny. It is how gay people are.
Greg
I could see Jim Parsons being Michael. Big time. The other side of Jim Parsons.