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A health expert turned filmmaker makes his East Coast premiere
CULTURE VULTURE
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The Boys
Written by Gordon Graham
Directed by Craig Baldwin
The Kraine Theatre
85 East 4th Street
212-868-4444

Review by Sean Michael O’Donnell

Gordon Graham’s The Boys was a critical hit in his native Australia, so it makes sense that the upstart Aussie theater group Outhouse Theatre Company would choose the play as its inaugural production. Unfortunately, Graham’s examination of misogyny and domestic violence doesn’t quite translate stateside, offering up little more than one-dimensional caricatures engaged in a series of onstage shouting matches.

Young men behaving badly: Nick Stevenson and Jeremy Waters blow of steam in The Boys.

The show centers on the thoroughly unlikable Sprague family, headed up by the clueless matriarch Sandra (Fiana Toibin) and including her three wayward sons: the volatile Brett (Nick Stevenson), the resentful Glenn (Jeremy Waters), and the infantile Stevie (Nico Evers-Swindell). All of Sandra’s boys have issues with women that manifest themselves in their current relationships. Brett is suspicious of his loyal girlfriend Michelle’s (Sarah Jane-Casey) fidelity. Glenn’s relationship with the controlling Jackie (Kimberley Cooper) brings his manhood into question. And Stevie finds himself trapped into marriage by his pregnant girlfriend Nola (Angela Ledgerwood). On the day of Brett’s homecoming from prison, the boys’ resentment towards the women in their lives quickly turns to rage. Angry and drunk, the boys head out to blow off some steam; when a young woman is found raped and murdered the following morning, the boys are arrested for the crime.

The play purports to examine the role of violence in male-female relationships, but with characters so thinly drawn the show never develops beyond its generic and contrived situations. The disjointed timeline further highlights the script’s shortcomings, and Craig Baldwin’s direction does little to clarify things as it makes no distinction between settings. Baldwin allows his actors (particularly the men) to proceed unchecked, and as a result they deliver uneven and often annoying performances. The exceptions are Jane-Casey, Cooper and Toibin, who turn in nuanced and richly-detailed performances as the story's vital female characters. As for whether or not the boys actually committed the crime, The Boys' terminal disorientation ultimately renders the question irrelevant.