When Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band emerged on the scene in 1968, it was a ground-breaking— even earth-shattering— portrayal of gay life. Well before the Stonewall Riots, and well well before this was a mainstream conversation, it brought an honest, raw, and deeply moving look at the lives, loves, and struggles of a young, gay, friend group. The star-studded 2018 Broadway revival was a heralded, glossy affair, well-deserving of its many accolades. That said, Windy City Playhouse, who deals extraordinarily well in the currency of intimate, immersive experiences, might be an even better space for this story.
Windy City excels at setting the scene from the very first moment— or sip, as their curated bar specials always pull from production dialogue, and always earns top marks. (The scotch and vanilla moonshine-based “affairs of the heart” is especially terrific.)
The show, directed by Carl Menninger, begins with audience members being welcomed in groups to enter the apartment via the set design elevator (it’s a neat bit of stagecraft), and invited to find a seat in an expansive NYC abode. The apartment belongs to Michael (Jackson Evans), and he bustles around as he prepares for the birthday party of Harold (the terrifically droll Sam Bell-Gurwitz), a friend who’s apparently incredibly hard to please. Helping him is Donald (Jordan Dell Harris), fresh from an appointment with a new psychoanalyst and ready to act as a welcomed voice of reason in what’s promising to be an especially fraught celebration. Before the guest of honor can appear, however, Michael gets a call from an old friend; his college roommate Alan who, between hysterical tears, insists on seeing him. Immediately. Tonight. Adding to the tension? Alan has no idea that neither Michael nor the entirety of the party’s guest list is gay.
As the evening’s guests arrive (and promise, in their own ways, to present as straight for the benefit of uptight Alan), the pretenses eventually fall away. A particularly nasty party game invites some harsh realities to come sit at the table and, alongside the characters, the audience is invited to examine their own prejudices and heartfelt choices they’d make in an instant of truth. Standout performances include William Marquez, whose larger-than-life Emory hides a raw interior, Ryan Reilly’s understated performance as Hank, and Christian Edwin Cook as Alan—an “is he or isn’t he” closeted man on the brink of a breakdown.
Credit: Michael Brosilow
The quiet spaces and intimate conversations the audience is privy to ensure that, by the time the two drinks and party snacks are provided in the middle of the performance, the audience has already wholly rsvp’d to this shindig like the gossipy, sympathetic flies on the wall that we all are. An evening spent with The Boys in the Band is a worthy one, and will inspire conversations of how far we’ve come, how far we have yet to go, and how— yet again— love is the only name of the game.
(Bring a friend. Heck, bring your own band.)
If you go:
Runs through April 19th, 2020
at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago
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