Boys In The Band

[edjames]

In today's NYPost, columnist Michael reidel announces Ryan Murphy has his eye on reviving this classic gay-history breaking play with some interesting casting choices...

 

Ryan Murphy to reboot ‘Boys in the Band’ on Broadway

By Michael Riedel

 

June 22, 2017 | 6:51pm

 

Ryan Murphy, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, may make a run at Broadway.

 

Murphy, the creator of “Glee” and “Feud,” has optioned “The Boys in the Band,” Mart Crowley’s pre-Stonewall play about a group of gay men who gather for a birthday party and some deliciously bitchy banter. The play debuted in 1968, and sources say Murphy would like to stage a 50th anniversary revival on Broadway next spring.

 

No casting yet, but insiders say Jim Parsons, whom Murphy directed in HBO’s “The Normal Heart,” would be perfect as Emory, the flamboyant interior decorator. There’s also talk that Neil Patrick Harris would make a swell Michael, the host of the party. He has the famous (and controversial) line, “Show me a happy homosexual, and I’ll show you a gay corpse.”

 

As for Harold, the sharp-tongued birthday boy, why not Mark Gatiss, one of the stars of British TV’s “Sherlock”? He played that role in the London revival of the play last year, and the Daily Telegraph said he cut “a fabulously sinister, aloof and angular figure.”

 

“The Boys in the Band” shocked early audiences with its openly gay characters and caustic dialogue, yet the play’s reputation has fluctuated over the years. At one point, it was slammed for perpetuating gay stereotypes. More recently, it’s been embraced for its humor and historical significance.

 

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Clive Barnes, longtime theater critic for The Post and the New York Times, put his finger on its appeal in his original 1968 review: “It is about a long, bloody and alcoholic party; but only the superficial will see it as a pack of youngish middle-age fairy queens shouting bitchisms at one another down the long night … The power of the play is the way in which it remorselessly peels away the pretensions of its characters and reveals a pessimism so uncompromising in its honesty that it becomes in itself an affirmation of life.”

 

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The 1970 cast of “The Boys in the Band.”

Crowley wrote the play in about four weeks in the summer of 1967. He was, as he once told me, “down on my ass and dead broke.” He could barely pay the rent when his friend, actress Diana Lynn (“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”), asked him to house-sit at her Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion while she and her husband, Mortimer Hall, went off on their yacht. (Fun fact: Mortimer’s mother was Dorothy Schiff, who owned The Post for 40 years.)

 

Crowley wrote much of the play by the pool in what he called “that great combination of anger and despair that gets you going.”

 

Producer Richard Barr and playwright Edward Albee put the play on at their experimental Greenwich Village theater in January 1968. Only a handful of people attended the first performance. But word got out, and the remaining performances were standing-room only. Barr moved the play that spring to an off-Broadway theater, where it ran 1,000 performances.

 

William Friedkin directed the 1970 movie, which featured the cast from the play. I saw the film not long ago, and it holds up well — a period piece, to be sure, but the zingers still zing and the cast is terrific.

 

“The Boys in the Band” at 50: This is one revival that I’m looking forward to seeing.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Interesting. He also briefly optioned Funny Girl for Broadway as GLEE was using it as a plotline on the show. Rumor had it that he wanted to slide Lea Michele into the lead, but a lot of that goodwill fizzled with her odd performance on the TONY Awards that year.

 

BITB is a great play. And if it moves forward, I hope they find the right cast.

[+ purplekow]

I assume it will be done as a period piece and there will be no attempt to update it. Much has remained the same since the original, but so much has changed , that any attempt to make those characters realistic citizens of the 21th century would definitely drain credulity.

[+ WilliamM]

I saw Leah Michelle in "Spring Awakening" and Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl." @Benjamin_Nicholas, I wish Ryan Murphy had just cast Ms. Michelle on stage in "Funny Girl" instead of an extended plot devise on "Glee."

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I saw Leah Michelle in "Spring Awakening" and Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl." @Benjamin_Nicholas, I wish Ryan Murphy had just cast Ms. Michelle on stage in "Funny Girl" instead of an extended plot devise on "Glee."

 

Michelle is now entirely too self-aware to be a good Fanny Brice. I don't think she'd carry the show well. I could be wrong, but there's just something missing with her.

 

I can name a dozen Broadway chorus girls who could absolutely kill in the role, but as we all know if it's not a 'name' above the title, tourist won't show up and the show will likely close. The sad reality of today's Broadway musical.

[+ Charlie]

The play rang so true to me when I saw the off-Broadway production in 1968, but now it really is a period piece. Imagine a group of middle-class younger gay New Yorkers who don't have smart phones, computers on which they can watch endless porn, apps like Grindr rather than having to pick up street hustlers, don't go to bars or baths, have never heard of Stonewall, AIDS, same-sex marriage, etc. Trying to genuinely update the play would turn it into something very different.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

The play rang so true to me when I saw the off-Broadway production in 1968, but now it really is a period piece. Imagine a group of middle-class younger gay New Yorkers who don't have smart phones, computers on which they can watch endless porn, apps like Grindr rather than having to pick up street hustlers, don't go to bars or baths, have never heard of Stonewall, AIDS, same-sex marriage, etc. Trying to genuinely update the play would turn it into something very different.

 

Updating this play would probably ruin it. You don't have to pander to a new generation when the original source material is solid. A great piece of work will remain a great piece of work, regardless. It's audiences who have changed... For the worse.

 

I don't support babying an audience to get them to more easily connect with something.

[+ Cash4Trash]

Maybe 4 or 5 years ago The Transport Group did a revival of The Boys In The Band here in New York. It was a very good production. They staged it in a loft and did it "in the round". We sat in sections but the aisles

were part of the production. The bar was at the top of the aisle where I was seated. It was like each member of the audience was a guest at the party but never said anything. We were all part of this family and it worked

so well. Can't imagine a more conventional production working as well as this one did.