3 Plays by Mart Crowley

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I found this play to be one of the funniest I have ever read. Black humour at its most hilarious.

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 cl! arity 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.