Setting

The Boys in the Band is a play that takes place in New York City in the late 1960s. It reflects a social situation in which gay men were free enough to gather together privately but were still oppressed enough to feel the degree of self-contempt exhibited by most of the characters here. The characters engage in urbane, witty dialog that New York Times critic Clive Barnes characterized as "camp or homosexual humor." Noting the effect of gay culture on New York, Barnes went on to note, "Indeed, the New York Wit, famous the world over, is little more than a mixture of Jewish humor and homosexual humor seen through the bottom of a dry martini glass." From the characters' awareness of fashion and good places to shop to the fact that Michael is characterized as a world traveler, there is every indication that these people could not...