3
Plays : The Boys in the Band, a Breeze from the Gulf, for Reasons
That Remain Unclear by
Mart Crowley, Gavin Lambert (Introduction)
I wonder sometimes why so few people know who
Mart Crowley is. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to call him
one of the most gifted and important American playwrights, and yet
nobody I've talked to, outside a handful of gay men who are in the
theater or who read too much, has known even his name.
The Boys in the Band is the best-known of Mr.
Crowley's plays: that's because, well, it IS the best, and also
because there was an excellent movie made of it, which is as often
seen as the play is read or seen on stage. The play is a brutal
birthday party one evening in New York in 1969, and the guest of
honor is guilt itself: eight gay men in their 30s gather and say
horrible things to each other, which reflect more on themselves
than on each other. Each in his own way is caught in the war zone
between his homosexuality and the pressure from society to be
something else (and goodness knows, the play opened just a few
months before Stonewall). The most incredible thing about the play
(in my opinion) is Mr. Crowley's evenness: you get the feeling
that he is just showing life as he knew it, and not trying to
judge or blame anyone or anything--rather a big feat for all the
hate that had poisoned that life-as-he-knew-it.
One criticism has been consistently directed at
The Boys in the Band over the years, that it depicts only
guilt-ridden self-hating gay men who wish for all the world that
they weren't gay. All I can say to this is, well, yes; but I am
only 19 and I know exactly why these particular men are so
guilt-ridden and self-hating, not because I grew up before
Stonewall (I was still in diapers at the beginning of AIDS), but
because it's STILL tough to be gay in America. This kind of guilt
and this kind of self-hate haven't disappeared--I experienced them
first-hand in the 1990s. If The Boys in the Band seems a bit
narrow for focusing only on that, then it's remarkably deep in
spite of its narrowness.
The other two plays in this collection are also
quite good. They too are built on Mr. Crowley's clarity and
evenness of vision, but it seems (unfortunately) that they'll
always suffer in comparison to the first play. They're good reads.
I recommend them highly.
I can't justify my claim to you that Mr. Crowley
is one of the great American playwrights--how can just one person
justify that? The claim, I hope, will justify itself as future
theater-goers, movie-goers, and readers (you!!) match Mr.
Crowley's clarity and get to know his plays. For all the
depressing subject matter, the plays are gripping, quite funny,
searingly intelligent, and very rewarding. He sees a lot. --
Anonymous Review
