Goldstein to the naive yet impenetrable narcissism of Mr. The three leading men offer a deadly accurate sendup of masculine wiles, from the puppyish hysteria of Mr. Macy on James Wolk's hip rollaway sets, the cast proves as promising as the author. Korder to establish a sympathetic character who ripples retroactively through the preceding scenes, upending our settled moral judgments about much of her husband's behavior.Īs directed with vitality by Mr. When we are belatedly introduced to Jack's much-belittled wife (Theo Cohan) in the evening's waning moments, it takes only a few lines for Mr.
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Nor is the play quite as artless as its fractionalized structure suggests. Kramer,'' and the destiny of the rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
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Korder's many wicked jokes, about such subjects as the connection between Scandinavian educational toys and the Swedish suicide rate, the lasting cultural resonance of Justin Henry's playground accident in the film ''Kramer vs. Some lines fall flat, as does one entire Act II bedroom scene. The evening is so light and uneven that one doesn't want to oversell it. AIDS and all, ''Boys' Life'' takes us into the late 80's, if not the early 90's - a novel, though not necessarily cheering, theatrical sight. They're far removed from the 1960's - they vaguely recall it as a decade of ''happiness'' - and are contemptuous of the 70's, whose only memorable phenomena in their eyes were Watergate and the Sex Pistols. The characters of ''Boys' Life'' are middle class, but not exactly Yuppies they don't talk about money or career. Mamet's - a crowd not well represented on stage to date. Korder is showing us a different, younger generation than Mr. The female antagonists of ''Boys' Life'' are on to the men's tricks and speak up instantly to refuse the roles, whether that of sexual object or punishing mother, that their mates would assign them. Korder, while as yet more a sketch artist than a playwright, has his own pungent voice and distinctive gifts. Mamet's ''Sexual Perversity in Chicago,'' it must be added that Mr. But lest anyone dismiss ''Boys' Life'' as a clone of Mr. The stylized comic writing - staccato, pithy, unerringly attuned to the vernacular - is Mametesque, and so is the brazenly heterosexual point of view. Newhouse Theater, is a production of the Atlantic Theater Company, a roving young ensemble formed by acting proteges of David Mamet and his frequent collaborator, W. When a woman of low self-esteem refuses to run off with Phil (Steven Goldstein) because she feels she is ''not worth the effort,'' he retrieves her ardor by glibly reassuring her that ''nobody's happy - that's the way things are supposed to be.'' When confronted with evidence of infidelity by his girlfriend, Don (Jordan Lage) explains that he slept with another simply to see if he ''could get away with it'' - an answer so ingenuous that the girlfriend, no fool, is almost disarmed. Korder is unsparing, he doesn't deny that his boys have charm. Yet the tone of ''Boys' Life'' is candid without being pompously judgmental. ''Boys' Life'' is a stinging chain of related blackout sketches, in which his characters stoop increasingly lower to woo women, even if they must ''talk about God for three hours'' or declare ''I love you'' to simulate the romantic illusion of intimacy. Let's admit we like them and go on from there.'' These men think nothing of betraying one another, let alone their lovers, and, should they get married, they do so only to avoid the bother of crawling ''through the gutter to get regular sex.'' As Jack (Clark Gregg), the most cynical of the trio, puts it: ''We're men. When they are sensitive or caring, chances are they are pulling a trick, the desired result of which is to lure a woman into bed. The young men of ''Boys' Life'' will be boys, and, the title's allusion to a beloved childhood magazine notwithstanding, they're no Boy Scouts.
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Or so we are to believe from the past decade's worth of confessional books, magazine columns and daytime talk shows in which man after man has bravely, even tearfully, come forth to testify that, yes, guys have feelings, too, and can cook quiche as well as eat it.īeing one of these swell new men myself, I probably should be offended by ''Boys' Life,'' a rude new play by Howard Korder about three male chums on the prowl for women in a present-day city that might be New York. AS we all know well by now, the modern American man is a wonderful creature - caring, open, sensitive, a boon not only to his buddies but also to the emancipated women he formerly treated like chattel.