The Boys in the Band, theatre review: Bare-knuckle truth-telling but we don't get to know any of the characters

Mart Crowley's 1968 doesn't feel like it has stood the test of time, writes Fiona Mountford
Arch: The Boys in the Band doesn't stand the test of time
Darren Bell
Fiona Mountford7 October 2016

It’s always tricky when a play that was groundbreaking in its time is revived some years later. Attitudes and morals will have shifted and the piece runs the risk of looking merely dated. Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, which premiered off-Broadway in 1968, placed a novel and illuminating focus on gay lives, but unfortunately the years haven’t been so kind.

What are inescapable to audiences now are echoes of the sublime My Night with Reg (1994), which also features a group of gay men gathering somewhat anxiously for a party. Whereas Reg abounds with humanity and, vitally, humour, these Boys — “eight voluble gay men and one declared straight” as an American critic memorably called them — abound with arch, snipey exchanges as a birthday party for the elusive Harold (Mark Gatiss) is held by the newly sober Michael (Gatiss’s real-life husband Ian Hallard — impressive).

As is contractually expected of all dramatic parties, the mood darkens and shifts — or perhaps lurches — into one of bare-knuckle truth-telling. Adam Penford’s production struggles with these changes in atmosphere and doesn’t allow us to feel that we’ve got to know any one character properly, despite strong performances from all nine actors.

There’s some deliciously over-the-top work from James Holmes as the outrageously camp Emory, an instantaneous red rag to Michael’s bullishly straight college buddy Alan (John Hopkins). What’s saddest, but perhaps most interesting, is that few of these men are happy.

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1/50

Until Oct 30, Park Theatre; parktheatre.co.uk

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