In his upper eastside Manhattan apartment, Michael is throwing a birthday party for Harold, a self-awoved "32 year-old, pock-marked, Jew fairy", complete with surprise gift: "Cowboy" a street hustler. As the evening wears on, fueled by drugs and alcohol, bitter, unresolved resentments among the guests come to light when a game of "Truth" goes terribly wrong.
Mantello wants his audience to breathe in not just his characters, with their one-liners, quips, power trips and deep sadness, but also to imbue the breathtaking contrast with the self-assured men who now are playing them, luckier men not born when the play was written. That is not to imply condescension on the part of these actors - on the contrary, for you can read the seriousness with which they take their assignments to play men much less famous than themselves - but merely to claim Mantello's clear purpose, as intensified by a design from David Zinn that has one foot in two eras and its cleverly timeless body in the close proximity of such contradictions as intimacy and performance, privacy and display.
Through it all, the ensemble filled with out-and-proud actors is uniformly terrific. They deftly hug the curves of the script as it goes from barbed humor to bile-spewing. To his credit Crowley doesn't tie things up with a bow. 'Call you tomorrow,' says Harold, after the carnage. In other words, boys will be boys.
1968 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1996 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2010 | Off-Broadway |
Transport Group Revival Off-Broadway |
2017 | West End |
West End Transfer Production West End |
2018 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2019 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Robin De Jesus |
2019 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Mart Crowley |
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