Stage: Stepping Out

The Boys In The Band

It’s 1968, almost fifty years ago and off Broadway a play is making an enormous stir. Mart Crowley’s The Boys In the Band has opened and is perhaps the first ever drama on stage to openly portray gay men and their world. In these days of much improved tolerance and acceptance that might not seem so extraordinary, but it was. This was pre-Stonewall riots and men and women lived closeted and clandestine lives.

Crowley’s play was indeed a milestone and within two years it had been made into a Hollywood movie which very soon attained cult status. The play centres around a birthday party at which a group of gay men have gathered to honour a friend.

But the evening becomes fraught with tensions as clashes occur between factions. It’s delivered with razor sharp wit and wicked one liners that have become almost cliches since, but it does show a time when being gay was not easy.

A hilarious piece of writing that exposes the acidity of camp repartee

Whilst here in the UK and across the waters in both America and most of Europe, homosexuality is pretty much accepted, there are still areas of the world where it is not only not accepted but is a punishable offence and even an offence carrying the death penalty.

So with our easy life here, what better time to revisit this work and remember that whilst we have it good many do not. And who better to head up this new production that Olivier Award winning actor and writer Mark Gatiss and his husband Ian Hallard along with an amazing cast of TV and West End stars.

The entire cast see this production as an important opportunity to remind older people of how important this controversial play once was but also how it still has a relevance today to a younger audience.

Strong as the message is we should also remember that this is a hilarious piece of writing that exposes the acidity of camp repartee and the power of the well-delivered bitchy aside. Mark Gatiss is playing the central character of Harold in this new production which will be sat as it originally was in 1968 New York.

The Boys In The Band, 8-12 November,
Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road,
0884 871 7650, atgtickets.com