*****Trophy Boys
A puzzle-box of male privilege
Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu in Trophy Boys. Photo: Valerie Terranova
Give me a short, whip-smart play any day! Australian playwright Emmanuelle Mattana wrote and stars in the swift (70-minute) four-hander Trophy Boys, in which an all-boys prep school, The Imperium (of course!), pits its star debaters – here played by female- or nonbinary-presenting performers in school-blazer drag – against their sister-school counterparts on the girls’ home turf.
Director Danya Taymor (who has another feminist fable on Broadway right now: John Proctor Is the Villain) keeps the pace crackling. Designer Matt Saunders neatly sets the scene with an array of posters celebrating feminist icons. “I am at my most inspired when surrounded by inspiring women,” says Owen (Mattana), seemingly sincere. Okay, so we have him immediately pegged as a performative suck-up.
“I love women!” exclaims Jared (Louisa Jacobson, cap clapped on backward). He’ll be echoing this sentiment like a cuckoo clock, as if in rebuttal to an unheard but anticipated accusation. While protesting way too much, Jared exerts a kind of golden-boy thrall over best bud Scott (Esco Jouléy, loose and expressive). If there’s a subtext here, you can safely bet that it won’t stay sub very long.
The fourth boy, David (Terry Hu), maintains his distance, along with an intellectually superior attitude. As the designated organizer, he will not be allowed to speak during the debate itself. Meanwhile, he enjoys the luxury of imagining himself nominally in charge and above the fray.
The boys have been assigned a booby trap of a position: “That Feminism has failed Women – Affirmative.” It’s a case of “win, you lose.” These scions have little experience with losing and don’t intend to start now. Owen is particularly wary of sabotaging his sure-to-be-meteoric political career.
Strategies arise and get struck down as the minutes tick by. Owen’s argument – “that we are actually more feminist than the feminists” – reflects his seemingly imperturbable confidence in his own superiority, but even he can recognize an overstep. Desperate, he tries to recall an essay he read “by this terrific radical Yemeni feminist. What’s her name? . . . Really iconic . . . ” He has a laptop stashed in his schoolbag but Wifi is officially verboten. “Fuck. Dumb Owen …” He’s crying now, building up to some serious self-battery. “Fucking dumb little bitch.”
As Owen’s braggadocio crumbles to dust, Mattana shifts the structure into a “closed room” conundrum. Having yielded to temptation at Scott’s insistence, the boys stumble upon some potentially devastating breaking news – the details of which are best left a surprise. Accusations and confessions fly. Is there a single one among them willing to step up and take some measure of responsibility?
Clearly, feminism has failed these young males. Not surprisingly, Owen proves as slippery and silver-tongued as a certain Supreme Court justice who has no business being there. Boys will be boys – can’t argue with that. But Mattana lays out a thrilling exposé of the half-lies we live by and manage, conveniently, to sweep aside.
At MCC Theater, to July 27