Boys in the Band, The (Original Version)
- Full Length Play, Drama, 1960s
- 9M
- ISBN: 9780573640049
This seminal work of the Off Broadway movement premiered in 1968 and was a long-running hit onstage, later filmed with the original cast. In 2010, the play made a triumphant return to New York City in an highly praised production produced by Drama Desk and Obie Award winning Transport Group.
Description
- Full Length Play
- Drama
- Time Period: 1960s
- Target Audience: Adult
- Set Requirements: Interior Set
- Cautions: Drugs, Alcohol
- Performance Group:
- College Theatre / Student, Community Theatre, Professional Theatre
In his upper eastside Manhattan apartment, Michael is throwing a birthday party for Harold, a self-awoved "32 year-old, pock-marked, Jew fairy", complete with surprise gift: "Cowboy" a street hustler. As the evening wears on, fueled by drugs and alcohol, bitter, unresolved resentments among the guests come to light when a game of "Truth" goes terribly wrong.
REVIEWS:
"A play of real substance, one that deserves to be performed not occasionally but regularly."
The Wall Street Journal
"...terrifically thoughtful... The Boys in the Band emerges remarkably universal."
NY1
"...deliciously delicious..."
Gay City News
"The Boys in the Band... goes from wittily !@#$%^&* to heartbreakingly brutal..."
Out Magazine
"Witty, !@#$%^&*, revelatory and dazzlingly entertaining... the excoriating wit is still there."
New York Post
"Humor is still on key in this poignant, sparkling revival of a landmark gay play... the star of the evening is the play itself solidly built, still moving and enormously entertaining."
New York Daily News
"This is a play that takes the homosexual way of life totally for granted and uses this as a valid basis for human experience... the power of the play is the way in which it remorselessly peels away the pretensions of its characters."
The New York Times
Characters
- Casting: 9M
- Casting Attributes: All Male, Minority casting
DONALD - twenty-eight, medium blond, wholesome American good looks
EMORY - thirty-three, small, frail, very plain
LARRY - twenty-nine with a starkly simple sense of individual style and color in his clothes. Dark eyes, dark hair, extremely handsome
HANK - thirty-two, tall, solid, athletic, attractive
BERNARD - twenty-eight, African-American, tall, gaunt, nice-looking, dressed in Ivy-League clothes
COWBOY - twenty-two, light blond, muscle-bound, too pretty
HAROLD - thirty-two, dark, lean, strong limbs, unusual face
ALAN - thirty, aristocratic Anglo-Saxon features
