Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Boys misbehaving: Emmanuelle Mattana’s TROPHY BOYS and Abby Rosebrock’s LOWCOUNTRY

• By drediman
• June 28, 2025
• No Comments

Currently on the boards in the city, you’ll be able to catch a pair of Off-Broadway plays that dissect male misbehavior from disparate perspectives. As always, read on for my thoughts on these fascinating new one-act works.

TROPHY BOYS
MCC Theater
Through July 27

There have been no shortage of new plays that attempt to dissect masculinity, often times in fascinating ways (John Proctor is the Villain, Angry Alan). Now we have Trophy Boys (RECOMMENDED) courtesy of MCC Theater in Hell’s Kitchen. First seen in Australia, Emmanuelle Mattana’s smart, compact new play similarly takes a good hard look at masculinity by way of an elite all-boys high school debate team. As the teenagers get ready to head into a high stakes match against their all-girls rival school to debate the topic of whether “feminism has failed women”, it becomes clear right off the bat that this is an apparently smart bunch of boys who are buoyed by a seemingly laidback “bro” mentality and the confidence that comes with privilege and a sense of entitlement. Suffice to say, we find them preparing for their topic in a rigorously intellectual manner, strategizing to attack it from multiple standpoints to ensure the tightest arguments. But as their competitive juices start flowing more intensely — and some potentially damaging truths are leaked about one of them — they reveal an underbelly of toxicity via intermittent flashes of homophobia, bullying, and sexism. As punchily directed by red hot director Danya Taymor (a Tony-winner for The Outsiders, this past season’s John Proctor Is the Villain), the cast of four is sensational, and the decision to cast only female and non-binary actors to play these characters only adds another layer of meta-theatrical nuance. Handily led by Mattana herself in the arguably central role of Owen, the actors burrow into their characters’ psyches with disarming intensity. If their portrayals veer dangerously close to caricatures, that’s not necessarily a bad thing — these boys are half-formed to begin with.

LOWCOUNTRY
Atlantic Theater Company
Through July 13

Attempting to do something equally interesting as Mattana’s aforementioned play is Abby Rosebrock’s clear-eyed drama Lowcountry (RECOMMENDED), which is currently being presented Off-Broadway by Atlantic Theater Company in Chelsea. Taking place in a tiny, minimally-appointed apartment in South Carolina, the new play is a character study of a man named David, who has made bad decisions in his life, resulting in him being registered as a sex offender, albeit unfairly in my estimation (no spoilers here as to how he got to this dire situation). That he is a man of color doesn’t help matters as he precariously attempts to rebuild his life, especially when his every move is being closely monitored by a system that’s rigged against him. What Rosebrock has fascinatingly done here is to invert the current finger-wagging paradigm, instead throwing a deeply sympathetic life jacket to canceled men like David — in this case in the form of the character of Tally, a similarly floundering, beaten-down woman who decides to go on a date with David. In their unconventional (to say the least), slow-burning courtship, they find — in the most unexpected ways — real human connection that jolts them both out of their catatonic state. In this regard, Lowcountry seems like an affecting throwback to odd couple romantic relationship dramas like Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly and Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, with a touch of Thelma and Louise thrown in during the play’s harrowing final stretch. Thanks to director Jo Bonney’s intensely naturalistic staging — as well as Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour’s bruised, painfully lived-in performances as David and Tally, respectively — a quiet but simmering desperation pervades the piece that still haunts me.