"It takes a fairy to make something pretty." That's the world according to Emory, the swishiest gay partygoer in a gaggle of them in Mart Crowley's 1968 drama, The Boys in the Band. Whether or not you buy Emory's decree, the Transport Group has made something pretty terrific with its intimate revival.
A butterfly-on-the-wall staging of The Boys in the Band situates its gay New Yorkers at finger-tip proximity to the audience, providing a fresh, voyeuristic tingle to the birthday party doings of Mart Crowley's 1968 comedy-drama.
Today, with its shock value long gone and its creaky playwriting more apparent, "The Boys in the Band" feels more like a cultural artifact than a classic play. Nevertheless, the Transport Gr…
There is so much good will and enthusiasm these days among theatregoers who have seen Lin-Manuel Miranda's complicated, valuable musical "Hamilton" (directed by Thomas Kail, at the Public) t…
In 1967, when “starving” writer Mart Crowley finished his play The Boys in the Band, he says he intended it to be controversial. When the play opened Off Broadway in 1968, accolades and …
In 1967, when "starving" writer Mart Crowley "on the brink of destitution" but sitting in the lap of luxury finished his play The Boys in the Band, he says he intended it to be controversial. But, having distanced himself from gay politics, he didn't set out to be an rights activist. "I probably didn't even know what that meant," he laughs.
