A review by lola425
The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley

4.0

Reading in prep for seeing the revival in May. So the question is do you view the play as a historical document illustrating how things were (this play was written on the cusp of Stonewall), do you view it as a cautionary tale (we were this way and won't ever be this way again) or do you just accept it as it is a snapshot of a certain kind of behavior from a particular group of friends and laugh your way through some of the more painful utterances? A little of everything, I guess. I very much enjoyed the play and felt that Crowley's characters were real, pulled people he had known in life. Are they nice people? Not all the time. Are they human and flawed? Most certainly. But if you're going to discount the play as a noxious brand of gay self-hatred that has no relevance in modern society, I think you'd be selling the play short. The characters stuck with me and made me think, so I consider that a successful play.

Note: After watching the movie, I felt like Lena Dunham/Girls writers most certainly were influenced by it when they wrote the Hamptons episode where everybody ends up fighting and Shoshanna gets drunk and unloads on them all. It just had that feel.