Ben Franklin once said, "Originality is the art of concealing your sources." If that be so, you will find no art in Boys Will Be Boys. Some fun, yes; some laughs, yes; some originality, no, no, a thousand times no. This goofily gay musical revue with a wisp of a plot begs, borrows, and steals from whatever it can get its claws onto. Pussy claws, mind you, not the cat kind that can actually raise a welt of wicked wit.
Originally presented at the Duplex Cabaret in New York, Boys Will be Boys has been adapted by creators Joe Miloscia (lyrics and dialogue) and Kenneth Kacmar (music) for the larger venue at New Conservatory Theatre Center. In the spirit of Nunsense, a mismatched troupe of vagrant talents slapdash together a variety show for a charitable cause: Gay Attention Deficit Disorder. The best venue these five friends could find was the basement of an American Legion Hall in Colma. "Could this town be any more dead?" remarks one of the performers, quickly establishing the level of freshness to be expected.
The show within the show goes awry from the start, and the cast is forced to make up an opening number on the fly. "Our opening is the biggest around," they sing, before promising not to let any pun go unturned. "We'll crack some jokes, and poke some cracks."
There is a lot of poking at gay stereotypes, or are they stereotypes of stereotypes? In a song in which Price Troche, Jr. and Brian J. Patterson declare themselves "girlfriends" for life, before exchanging potshots, the insults don't get much beyond accusations of wearing Gucci knockoffs and last year's Prada. Stephanie Temple plays the straight friend of the four gay guys, and she has a torchy ballad in which she sings the chestnut lament that all the good-looking men are gay. Christopher M. Nelson revisits the little gay boy lousy at sports in a song that gets a lot of mileage from the multiple connotations of the word "balls" once we hit the showers. Timothy Barnes goes down another fantasy route, singing about his boyfriend cop, handcuffs, and Vaseline. (To paraphrase Elaine Stritch, does anyone still use Vaseline?)
Kacmar's original music has a pleasant predictability, but at times he borrows pretty directly from original sources, in the Forbidden Broadway vein, as Miloscia provides parody lyrics that spin off the original. One of the show's cleverer numbers uses Jules Styne and Stephen Sondheim's "Some People" from Gypsy for an anthem performed in feisty fashion by Troche as he rejects the shallow gay lifestyle. Not that there is any sustaining point of view to the show, for Troche also dons a bridal veil for a variation on Irving Berlin's "Old-Fashioned Wedding" that he sings in counterpoint with Patterson.
As even an oblique social commentary, Boys Will Be Boys is not routed is any particular time. When the moment finally arrives for The Serious Song, it's not, as you might expect, about AIDS, but harkens back to drive-in movies, James Dean, and small-town gay bashings. Nelson does a good job on this song, one of the better original compositions from Miloscia and Kacmar. Unfortunately, it leads to an ensemble pity-party number about the clouds of fear always hovering over gay people. But then it's sunny again, and the cast closes the show with an upbeat Hairspray -type number that invokes a "don't judge a book by its cover" sentiment.
With lively direction by Andrew Nance, a few punchy dance steps choreographed by Temple, and musical direction by the amiable G. Scott Lacy, Boys Will Be Boys is 90 minutes of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue – with the blue coming in the Viagra tablet which, in the off-kilter topicality of this show, rates its own elaborate production number.
Boys Will Be Boys will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through June 26. Tickets are $22-$40. Call 861-8972 or go to www.nctcsf.org.