Transport Group (TG), the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award and a 2007 Obie Award, will present Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, directed by artistic director Jack Cummings III, beginning Friday, February 12, and opening Sunday, February 21, at 5pm in a site-specific production at 37 West 26 Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, Penthouse.
One of the first frank treatments of gay life depicted in mainstream theatre, The Boys in the Band is a portrait of a birthday party turned vicious. The play, which deftly mixes sharp humor with emotional revelation, opened at off-Broadway's Theatre Four in April 1968 (after having been produced by the
Playwrights Unit at the Vandam Theatre earlier that year) and played 1,000 performances, a remarkable number for any play and certainly for one with controversial subject matter for its time.
William Friedkin directed the play's film adaptation, which was released in 1970, and which featured the entire original off-Broadway cast. The play, which has served as inspiration for a host of gay playwrights, received an off-Broadway revival in 1996. The
Transport Group production marks the play's first major New York revival since then.
The cast includes
Jonathan Hammond (Ragtime) as Michael;
Christopher Innvar (110 in the Shade, Floyd Collins) as Larry;
Kevin Isola (
Brooklyn Boy) as Alan; Jon Levenson (Irish Rep's The Hairy Ape) as Harold;
Kevyn Morrow (Olivier nomination for Ragtime, First Wives Club) as Bernard;
Graham Rowat (Lovemusik, Guys and Dolls) as Hank; Aaron Sharff as Cowboy; John Wellmann (TG's cul-de-sac) as Emory; and
Nick Westrate (A Moon for the Misbegotten) as Donald.
Mart Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1935. After graduating from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. in 1957, Crowley went to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting
Natalie Wood on the set of her film Inside Daisy Clover. Wood hired him as her assistant, primarily to give him ample free time to work on an idea he had for a play-which became The Boys in the Band. Crowley's second play, Remote Asylum, was mounted at the
Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in 1970. In that same year, he enjoyed great success with the film adaptation of The Boys in the Band. His next play, the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf, earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award nomination for Best Play. In 1979 and 1980, Crowley served first as the executive script editor and then producer of the ABC series "Hart to Hart," starring Wood's husband
Robert Wagner and
Stefanie Powers. Other credits include the teleplays for "There Must Be a Pony" (1986), "Bluegrass" (1988), "People Like Us" (1990), and a "Hart to Hart" reunion special in 1996. Crowley has appeared in the documentaries The Celluloid Closet (1995), about homosexuality and its depiction on screen throughout the years, and
Dominick Dunne: After The Party (2007), a biography of Crowley's friend and producer,
Dominick Dunne.
The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley was published by Alyson Books in November 2009 and the film adaptation of The Boys in the Band was released for the first time on DVD in November 2008. A feature documentary, entitled Making the Boys, directed by Crayton Robey, about the making of the play's first production and its relevance premiered as an official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently being shown at film festivals throughout the country.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of The Boys in the Band in 2008
Transport Group presented An Evening With...The Boys in the Band, which featured a concert reading of the play followed by a panel discussion at the
Lucille Lortel Theatre. Participants in the evening included Mart Crowley and original cast members
Laurence Luckinbill and
Peter White. The evening was hosted and moderated by
Michael Feingold.
The set design for The Boys in the Band is by
Sandra Goldmark; costume design is by
Kathryn Rohe; lighting design by R. Lee Kennedy (two-time Drama Desk nominee TG's The Audience, Bury the Dead); casting is by
Alan Filderman; production stage manager is
Wendy Patten; associate director is
Gregg Wiggans.
Founded in 2001,
Transport Group, under the leadership of
Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director, and
Lori Fineman, Executive Director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that develops and produces work by
American Playwrights and composers with the aim of exploring the American consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Transport Group presented its premiere production in 2002:
Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which featured older actors in the roles of Emily and George and a twelve-year-old girl as the Stage Manager. Its second production, Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by
William Inge, that featured a cast of 26 as well as original songs, premiered in 2003. In 2004 the company presented the first New York revival of
Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite, which received rave reviews, played to sold-out houses, and earned two Drama Desk Award nominations including outstanding revival of a musical. Recent productions include the world premiere of the musical The Audience, which featured a cast of 46 actors and earned three Drama Desk Award nominations, including outstanding musical; Normal, a new musical about a mother's battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee
John Cariani; the first New York revival of
Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, Obie-winning production of
William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the world premiere musicals Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy, and Being Audrey, and the first New York revival of
Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead. Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive.
Transport Group is the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award for its "breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions."
The Boys in the Band plays Wednesday through Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 4pm and 8pm; and Sunday at 5pm through March 14 at 37 West 26 Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, Penthouse. There will be an added performance on Monday, February 15 at 8pm and the performance on Friday, February 19 will have an early curtain at 7pm. Also, there is not performance on Saturday, February 13 at 4pm. Tickets, which are $38 - $45, are available at www.transportgroup.org or by phoning TheaterMania at 866-811-4111 or 212-352-3101. Online box office is available 24 hours; theatre box office opens one hour before curtain time. For more information about
Transport Group and The Boys in the Band, visit www.transportgroup.org.
