The Boys in the Band [Paperback]

Born in 1935 in Mississippi, Mart Crowley found his way to Los Angeles and was working in the film industry when he was befriended by actress Natalie Wood. She was so taken with his talents that she essentially subsidized Crowley's writing career until the completion of his first project: THE BOYS IN THE BAND, which opened off-Broadway in 1968 and proceeded to startle, shock, and unsettle audiences for over one thousand performances.

In general, the play concerns a group of gay men who meet at Michael's home to hold a birthday party for Harold; chief among the "gifts" is a male prostitute. The party is lively and silly, but Michael, the host, is concerned: he has received a telephone call from an old college chum who is straight, does not know that Michael is gay, has left his wife, and may or may not be dropping to visit at this particularly inauspicious moment.

The set up is essentially comic, and the first act of the play reads very much as a comedy as Michael ahd his guests rattle off waspish lines and indulge in horseplay; even so, as the alcohol begins to flow, they begin to discuss their various lives. Michael struggles with both sexual guilt and alcoholism; Larry and Hank argue about Larry's repeated infidelities; Emory, who is particularly flamboyant, has been repeatedly arrested by the vice squad. Although they laugh and joke about such matters on the surface, one is increasingly aware of a growing darkness beneath the sparkle. And when Michael's presumably straight friend does indeed drop in, the darkness boils over into a scalding series of confessions, vicious accusations, and explosions of self-loathing. What begins as a comedy suddenly falls on the reader like a ton of bricks.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND is both famous and infamous for its sharp dialogue, and perhaps the single best known line in the play is "Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse"--and the self-loathing of the characters has often drawn criticism from gay activists for perpetuating the media myth that homosexuals are self-destructive by nature. But it is worth pointing out that the play is a portrait of New York gay society in the pre-Stonewall era, a time during which gays and lesbians were savaged by the broader society to such a degree that self-loathing became a reflexively learned behavior. As such, and by most accounts of the men and women who lived through that, it presents a remarkably accurate (and stunningly acid) portrait of urban gay men of that era.

If it is important to read THE BOYS IN THE BAND within the context of its times, it is also important to note that the play struck just as many began to recognize the viciousness with which society attacked homosexuals. The Stonewall riots, which marked the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement, occurred within a year of the play's opening--and although the gay community had and still has a very long road to travel to complete equality, nothing would be same thereafter.

As Michael says near the end of the play, "If only we could learn not to hate ourselves quite so much!" It is due in part to this trail-blazing play that we have indeed done so. A landmark drama, a frightening portrait of the past that remains too-often accurate even today, and a knock-out bit of theatre that deserves considerably more attention than it presently receives. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer