The Boys In the Band. Committee Theatre
San Francisco: Committee Theatre, 1969. Octavo, publisher’s stapled illustrated paper wraps.
"You show me a happy homosexual, and I’ll show you a gay corpse." Playbill for an early production of playwright Mart Crowley’s breakthrough comedy-drama "The Boys In the Band" at San Francisco’s Committee Theatre in 1969. Premiering off-Broadway in 1968, the play depicts the lives, struggles, and relationships of a group of gay friends (and one straight interloper) gathering for a birthday party on the Upper East Side in the 1960s. Described by Times critic Mike Barnes as "by far the frankest treatment of homosexuality I have ever seen on the stage," the pre-Stonewall play shocked mainstream audiences, with some activists decrying its portrayal of urban gay men as self-loathing and superficial. An early West Coast engagement of Crowley’s landmark play, staged only months after Stonewall and directed by original-production stage manager Murray Gitlin, the San Francisco run became a focal point in the growing debate over whether the work humanized gay men or perpetuated stereotypes of shame and dysfunction. It was nevertheless a critical and popular success, praised for its rapid-fire one-liners, and received two film adaptations: in 1970 by William Friedkin and in 2020 by Joe Mantello. Two small cast change notices laid in. Light creasing and soiling. Very good. Uncommon. Item #13212
$45.00