Good Boys and True

Our last production this year at the Second Stage Theater was Good Boys and True.  We ended up going on opening night which was fun from the people watching perspective.  Not that I knew many of their names but I recognized many faces and actors and actresses that we had seen over the years.  Nothing better than a good people watch.

As I have said in the past, I have yet to see a bad play at Second Stage.  The acting is always good.  The play is usually thought provoking and interesting.  They do a solid job.  I am absolutely signing us up again for next year. 

Good Boys and True centers around a scandal at a prep school in the Washington DC area.  St. Joe's which I gather is supposed to represent St. Alban's that is an all boys prep school in the DC area. 

The sex scandal is a discovery of a tape that shows intimate details of the supposed captain of the football team having abusive sex.  You can't see the boys face in the tape but the coach believes it to be Brandon, the football captain.  He bring in his mother.  The coach and Brandon's father went to St. Joe's together and shared in many of the behind the closed door goings on of years past.  The father is traveling so the mother meets with the coach. The mother, of course, can't imagine that her son was involved in such a scandal.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Brandon is having a relationship with another high school football player, Justin, who is gay.  Hence, the tape to undercover his fear of reality to the world that he is gay.

The whole story about the scandal wasn't what I liked about the play.  It was the underlying topics of the haves and have nots.  The girl that Brandon had sex with came from the local public school, the other side of the tracks, per se.  His friend, Justin, was the first of his family in a school like St. Joe's that he didn't particularly care for.  He wasn't part of the good old boys club, the net work, the air of privilege, the master of the universe syndrome. 

As we begin to watch our oldest daughter go through the college process and look at the choices we made with her for High School, the play is thought provoking. 

After we left the theater, Fred turned to me and said "that play is confirmation of why sending our kids to LREI is the best decision we ever made".