Dan Myers
Jeremy Pagel, Joshua Paffel and Duane Campbell from "The Boys in the Band."
StageQ’s The Boys in the Band is a gay old time. It’s also an old gay time. What I mean by that is the play was written, performed and set in pre-Stonewall 1968. Some of the characters are broad and might be viewed as stereotypical. But let’s be honest: Other than the “we all hate ourselves because we’re gay” end resolution, there’s nothing too dated here beyond the mid-century couch and touchtone phone. Gay men can still be bawdy, campy and downright fun. Camp — half parody, half exaggeration — is how gays and lesbians survived some of the harshest degradations society could dole out. Watch an episode or two of RuPaul’s Drag Race and you’ll see all that wry humor and parody alive and well in the present day.
Boys, which plays at the Bartell Theatre through Oct. 10, tells the story of a birthday party thrown in a Greenwich Village apartment by Michael (Dennis Yadon) for his frenemy Harold (Donnovan Moen). All of their mutual gay friends are invited, including Donald (Greg Hudson), Michael’s mopey, psychoanalysis-obsessed weekend lover. But before the party can get started, Michael gets a call from his college roommate, Alan (Edric Johnson). Alan is an upper-class bigot, and Michael has never revealed to him that he’s gay. Despite Michael’s protests, Alan insists on crashing the party. When Michael’s flamboyant friends attempt to butch it up to maintain Michael’s secret, hijinks ensue.
Of course, Boys is not all fun and games. The play tells the very real story of hatred and homophobia that I wish I could say was a relic of the past. When the delightful Emory (played by the equally delightful Joshua Paffel) prances around and aspirates his s’s, Alan punches him squarely in the mouth, threatened, the play implies, not just by Emory’s gayness but by his own. The beat-down Emory receives is startling, particularly given the light amusement of the story so far. But this is precisely what makes it resonant. The LGBT community has mastered turning pain into parody. Even so, we can’t underestimate the pain and occasional violence that continue to define our realities.
The show encapsulates the resilience of the community along with the joy. As an ensemble, the cast works so well together it’s easy to imagine them as the best of friends, lovers and occasional rivals. Yadon captures Michael’s casual philosophy, which turns to embittered bullying as he drinks. He’s the moral center of the play, but a center that cannot hold.
At the top of the show, Producer Michael Bruno introduced Boys as the first show of StageQ’s 2015 season. He also explained that Boys was not a musical, a common misconception. There’s no band in The Boys in the Band, but as one audience member shouted out, “There are boys!” There are. Richly textured ones so fun and unforgettable, you’ll want to come for a drink and stay for the party.
