Boys in the Band
In celebration of Pride Month, Open Stage Director Stuart Landon unscrews Broadway’s 1968 time capsule to serve Harrisburg “The Boys in the Band.” The one-act ensemble melodrama contains enough weaponized friendships and sarcasm dripping off snarly fangs to consider the play the gay community’s answer to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Set in Michael’s (TJ Creedon) flairly furnished New York City apartment, the air reeks of smoke, lasagna, and pretension. Each birthday party guest saunters in as if they’re making a grand entrance at a cotillion.
The banter starts off cutting and keeps escalating, with dynamics shifting with each doorbell ring. Every remark slides across the spectrum between catty and vicious in that competitive way males often brandish when establishing their dominance in the animal kingdom.
When Michael’s straight college roommate Alan (Jason Samarin) figuratively and literally crashes the party, Creedon fuels Michael with an alcohol-soaked fuse, feeding off his party guests’ vulnerabilities, nailing his character’s self-loathing turned outward like a spider injecting venom everywhere.
As the evening wears on, each Open Stage actor accentuates his respective character with enough shade to mute the New York City skyline outside Michael’s overpriced window.
Emory (Calian Byard) is the most affectatious, putting on a fabulous one-man show, oscillating between grande dame and butching things up for Alan. Samarin stays in the box to play the straight and structured Alan, who has his own thinly veiled issues.
And speaking of issues, let’s spill some more tea.
I would tell Bernard (Marcus McGhee) to pick a struggle between his sexuality, his race, and bemoaning his long-lost love, but this is not a show with audience participation. Hank (Joseph Chubb) and Larry (Cory Metcalf) don’t strike me as a good match, fraying like Michael’s split ends as the play progresses, but that’s none of my business.
Then there is Harold (Joshua Dorsheimer), the perpetually tardy birthday boy. If the script notes on Harold suggest making him as sarcastic, outspoken, and over-the-top as possible, then Dorsheimer slays. Harold’s birthday present, Cowboy (Brad Barkdoll), may not talk real good, but he’s so pretty that it don’t matter none. Three snaps in a Z-formation to all the guys for amping the drama inherent in their exaggeratedly flawed characters.
Standing slightly apart from the others, Donald (Zach Haines) is the most subtle character, initially bemoaning his problems to Michael only, then keeping quiet when he unwittingly finds himself in a love triangle. He provides grounding to the group, being the first to arrive and the last to leave. Swimming in somewhat deeper waters, Haines gets his own on-the-sly snap.
Although many of writer Mart Crowley’s characters feel sympathetic, their friendships feel rooted on somewhat shaky ground, like when your parents brought you to an adult party and expected all you kids to play together, despite having little in common aside from your approximate ages.
Throughout the play’s all the too-few dance numbers, the friends feel the most cohesive, like the pressure is off. The highlight of the play for me was when Creedon, McGhee, Byard, and Metcalf take the play’s title literally and girl-group dance to “Heat Wave.”
The setting (Kalina Barrett, scenic designer; Heather Jannetta, scenic charge artist) itself is a character, capturing the zeitgeist of the late 1960s with its magazine rack throwback, and Michael turning on each lamp individually the way we did prior to smart houses. (Tristan Stasiulus, lighting designer).
I had forgotten what it felt like to slam the receiver down on a springy-corded rotary phone, (Rachel Landon, prop master; Anthony Pieruccini, sound designer; Wayne Landon, audio consultant) or to call an operator for a phone number, then asking someone nearby for paper and pen to write it down.
Same for the costumes (Jacob Schlenker). I had forgotten all about lime leisure suits and orangey-brown fashion coordinates blending into orangey-brown furniture. And when the bile goes back down my throat, I’ll gladly revert to forgetting them all over again.
“The Boys in the Band” stands as a landmark piece in LGBTQIA+ history as an unprecedented mainstream portrayal of gay culture, offering a raw keyhole peek into gay male friendships during an era when homosexuality was still largely stigmatized and criminalized.
If you invite yourself to Harold’s birthday party to see “The Boys in the Band” for yourself, be sure to visit Open Stage’s snack bar AND all-gender bathroom before the show starts.
No one will count the umbrellas in your signature drink (drinks?), but if you have a small bladder like this writer, (my turn to read the room and throw shade) you will be counting every riveting minute, and there will be approximately 120 of them.
“The Boys in the Band” makes its grand debut on Open Stage May 23, and makes the room feel empty when it exits the party on June 13. For more information and ticket sales, visit www.openstagehbg.com/shows/boysintheband.
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