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Boys in the Band, The (Original Version)

  • Mart Crowley
  • 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.

  • 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
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.

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

Premiere Production: The Boys In the Band was first presented at Theatre Four in New York City on April 14, 1968. It was directed by Robert Moore.
  • Casting: 9M
  • Casting Attributes: All Male, Minority casting

  • MICHAEL - thirty, average face, smartly groomed
    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
  • Name Price
    Boys in the Band, The Script Order Now

    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.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.

    $24.95