The Boys in the Band (Chapel Off Chapel) ★★★

Written by Mart Crowley. Chapel Off Chapel, Melbourne. 27 Feb – 15 Mar 2025.

Mart Crowley’s 60s gay classic The Boys in the Band has seen it all. It’s been adored, revered, filmed, dismissed, reviled, revived, filmed again… It’s the Cher of gay theatre. Does it still have something to say in 2025? Are modern gay men still full of self-destructive self-loathing? Are we just better at hiding it behind botox, wellness, and the mask of societal acceptance? Is that too deep a question to ask post-Mardi Gras?

It’s 1968, and a group of gay friends/frenemies gather to celebrate the birthday of Harold (Mason Gadowski), who is turning a ripe old thirty-two. Michael (Maverick Newman), the host, is holding it all together through blind determination and crippling credit card debt, helped by Donald (Jack Stratton-Smith), his handsome, neurotic ex. But when Michael receives a distraught phone call from his straight college friend Alan (Mitchell Holland) asking to come over and speak to him, he panics.

Despite his seemingly open exterior, Michael isn’t out to everyone, and this gaggle of gays in his home will be hard to hide—especially the camp interior designer Emory (Ryan Henry), the studiously fey Bernard (Adolphus Waylee), and the loving/fighting couple Hank (Stephen Mahy) and Larry (Andy Johnston). And then there’s the gorgeous but scantily clad rentboy (Harry McGinty) that Emory has brought over as a gift… it won’t be the uptight Alan’s kind of scene. Or will it?

Director Alister Smith and designer Harry Gill have embraced the camp aesthetic of a Mardi Gras float. Walls of shimmering silver streamers, a bold red carpet with blue velvet furniture, and an ominous pop-portrait of Judy Garland staring down on proceedings—it’s time to “glitter & be gay.”

At first, you’re left wondering if it’s “too gay” (is there ever such a thing? No!). Will this dazzling and distracting set handle the nasty drama to come? Excellent lighting by Tom Vulcan tackles the play’s sharp mood swings with ominous ease.

The cast attack the script with gusto. Maverick Newman steps right off the Murder for Two stage into The Boys in the Band with barely a change of outfit—his queer southern charm is still a joy to watch. As Michael, the play’s central character, he gets a lot more dramatic meat to chew on here, and his camp playfulness descends into shrill rage with frightening force. He proves there’s grit under the silliness worth a dramatic turn.

Around him are a parade of gay caricatures—the outrageously camp one, the slutty one, the straight-acting one, the studious one, the insecure snarky one… all ready to snap at each other. In a room full of this much shade, it’s a wonder we can even see them.

The slow-building comedic farce is fun to watch as Michael’s fear hits peaks and troughs with each ring of the doorbell. But once we get past this, things start to lose steam as the cast and creatives struggle to reveal the heart of the play.

The Boys in the Band is a story full of self-loathing in which none of the characters are happy; they are snatching moments of happiness where they can. It taps into the fear and sadness of queer life pre-Stonewall and the Gay Liberation movement of the 60s and 70s, when gay men were only “free” behind closed doors, with the curtains firmly shut. There is a lack of depth to the despair on stage, which struggles to find firm footing under all the confetti.

Perhaps the fact that this relatively youthful production team doesn’t quite manage to translate that generational pain is a sign of progress—it’s not a time we ever want to return to.

In a similar vein to the concurrent revival of Joanna Murray-Smith’s Honour at Red Stitch Actors Theatre down the road, there is a core truth to The Boys in the Band that keeps the play relevant today. Not everyone lives with the queer freedoms we have in the metropolitan centres of a liberal democracy (and even then, many people in smaller communities within our cities are still closeted for fear of exclusion), and there is power in recognising that and letting it inform a period piece like this.

This production of The Boys in the Band is colourful and as moving as a drag queen lip-syncing a ballad—it only goes so deep, but we get to have fun along the way. It’s an important piece of queer theatre (a gay Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) that deserves to be remembered for the way it helped change public perception of gay men in a time when they were hidden in the shadows of society. And some of the dialogue… oooh, you’ll be cackling all the way home.