The Boys in the Band

Before you read any further, I strongly advise you to open a new browser window or pick up a telephone and arrange for your tickets to the Transport Group's volcanic production of Mart Crowley's "The Boys in the Band." Director Jack Cummings III's site-specific staging in a penthouse space on West 26th Street doesn't accommodate a large crowd, as the intention is to have the audience feel as if it is present at Harold's birthday party. Once word is out on this sensational production, tickets are going to be scarcer than straight boys at Splash.

Cummings and his extraordinary cast—companies such as this one are why acting ensemble awards exist—burrow right to the core of Crowley's landmark work, and what they unearth feels as raw and fresh as "Boys" did when it blew the lid off the American theater in 1968. I was a 14-year-old closeted Ohio boy then, and if that prevented me from seeing the New York production, it didn't stop me from devouring the published text, double-LP recording, and eventually the iconic 1970 film version. Yes, the characters were struggling with self-loathing to varying degrees, but at least they were struggling, and that meant I could struggle too. More important, they were written with depth, empathy, and no apologies for putting gay life front and center. "Boys" mattered.

Still, none of that matters in 2010. The play is now a period piece and stands or falls on the quality of its writing. Happily, Cummings' judiciously trimmed, intermissionless production reveals Crowley's rock-solid construction, effortless comic gifts, and unerring eye for character. Putting the play into three dimensions is inspired. As the actors weave throughout the audience, we are inevitably drawn into the action. When camaraderie degenerates into armed conflict, we're dodging the bullets too. And now that "Boys" is no longer expected to be about all gay men, it is free to be what it always was: a penetrating look at a specific group of interrelated friends, all struggling to discover how to be themselves in a society that's coming apart at the seams.

First among equals has to be Jonathan Hammond's scorching Michael. Hammond makes it brutally clear that Michael's intense envy of Alan, his supposedly straight former college roommate, is the fuel for his destructive behavior. Alan is what Michael could have been, if only he were straight or at least capable of pretending to be, and Hammond's Michael cannot bear his exclusion from that privileged position. Kevin Isola is a haunting Alan, perhaps the show's most difficult role. It's Crowley's intention that we never know for sure if Alan is straight or not, and Isola makes him achingly human while maintaining that enigma: He could be either a straight guy with glimmers of enlightenment or a homosexual fleeing back to the "safety" of his marriage after the carnage he has just witnessed.

Kevyn Morrow is an affecting Bernard, at his best defending his friendship with the nelly Emory. Graham Rowat and Christopher Innvar are awkward and touching as Hank and Larry, a couple struggling to discover how to be together. Nick Westrate's boyish Donald grows quieter and sadder as Michael unravels; his pain is palpable. John Wellman wisely doesn't compete with Cliff Gorman's indelible Emory, finding his own sweet and spunky take on the character, while Jon Levenson reinvents Leonard Frey's brilliant Harold in a softer but no less dangerous vein. Levenson's fleeting moment of bashful joy when Harold receives his birthday presents is surprising and stunning. As one of those presents, Cowboy, a hustler, Aaron Sharff is shy and sly.

Have you got those tickets yet? Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Presented by Transport Group Theatre Company at 37 W. 26th St., Penthouse, NYC. Feb. 21–March 28. Tue. and Wed., 7 p.m.; Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. (No performance Tue., March 9; Fri., March 5 performance is at 7 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.transportgroup.org. Casting by Alan Filderman.