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Boys’ Life
Reviewed by Jenny Lower
The New American Theatre at Theatre Asylum
Through March 7
If its Pulitzer Prize nomination is any indication, Howard Korder’s Boys’ Life must have caught something in the zeitgeist when it debuted on Broadway in 1988. The story of three young men in their mid-to-late 20s navigating early adulthood and relationships with women in New York City, far less wholesomely than the periodical namesake suggests, feels like the 80s male equivalent of Girls, packed with up-to-the-minute cultural references and a then-stylish youth lexicon.
This New American Theatre revival, directed by Jack Stehlin (who originated the role of Jack in Korder’s precursor play, Life on Earth) seems aimed at reminding audiences just how little has changed since that period. Certainly the anxiety, the cynicism, the aimlessness of youth, the gender inequality, and the preoccupation with the end of the world all seem apt enough. But what’s striking is how dated the material feels — not just its language, since few things expire faster than youth slang, nor its white male perspective, especially given the current block of Academy Award nominees, or even the stone-washed jeans.
Rather, in the nearly 30 years since the play’s debut, the range for acceptable, publicly admittable male behavior has narrowed considerably. It’s difficult to imagine a young urban woman encouraging her date, as one does in the play, that “a man can do whatever he wants.” We’re less comfortable with shrugging off sexual misdeeds and more attuned to the human (generally female) cost of those transgressions, which is largely absent in Korder’s male-focused script. And while NAT tries to point ironically to those ideas, it also inadvertently advances them: The practice of double-casting only the female roles, whatever its motivation, has the odd effect of reinforcing the sense of the male characters’ essentiality and primacy, while making the women characters feel incidental and disposable.
Staged as a series of interlocking scenes, the play follows a trio of boyhood friends: Phil (Brendan Brandt), an anemic, romantically inept depressive, who in Brandt’s portrayal retains a waifish innocence even when making disturbing confessions; Don (Noah James), an affable, slightly dull macho man experiencing the first stirrings of adult responsibility and integrity; and Jack (Jeff Kongs), ostensibly the most settled, with a wife and child he enjoys disavowing to strangers. Functioning as social ringleader and chief apologist for male privilege, Jack is the sort of toxic wit who compensates for his own insecurities by baiting his friends to the brink of fisticuffs and then dialing back just enough to avoid alienating them forever. Kongs perfectly modulates Jack’s aggression and restraint, never overplaying his self-loathing but leaving no doubt as to its presence.
Among the women, only Lisa (Ally Gordon), Don’s waitress/sculptor girlfriend, succeeds as a fully formed character, although Maggie (Kasey Dailey, at the performance reviewed) comes next closest as a Central Park jogger shrewd enough to see through Jack’s façade but not prudent enough to listen to her instincts. One flat scene in which Don undertakes an ill-advised one-night stand with a “crazy” girl (Nicole Wyland) places our perspective squarely with Don and his compromised situation, misplaying the encounter for broad comedy instead of its undercurrent of pathos.
The play’s biggest watershed moment, both for its characters and in terms of the play’s enduring relevance, comes in its final scene, when Phil makes his revelation and the fault lines that have been building for 90 minutes deepen and crack. For all its pessimism, there seems to be some wisdom in Jack’s observation from an earlier scene: “We’re men. We do terrible things. Let’s admit we like them, and start from there.”
Note: Some roles double-cast.
The New American Theatre at Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through March 7. (310) 701-0788; www.newamericantheatre.com
