Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu Photo by Valerie Terranova

The stakes are high for the boys' debate team from St. Imperium: Owen (played by playwright Mattana), Jared (Louisa Jacobson), Scott (Esco Jouléy), and David (Terry Hu) must argue the affirmative stance on the assigned topic "Feminism has failed women." With only one hour to prepare (the play's dramatic time roughly equaling actual time passing on your watch), the boys sequester inside a classroom at their female competitors' school, St. Gratia. It is in this enclosed space, papered with portraits of iconic women like Thatcher, Thunberg, Angelou, Malala, and Mother Teresa looking on (thoughtful set design by Matt Saunders), that all of the action unfolds.

Confronting the hazards of their task, the boys keep their eyes on the prize ("That trophy is thicc," Scott quips when Jared references its impressive size). Lead speaker Owen fears that footage of him arguing an anti-feminist stance could be captured, compromising future political ambitions. In their misguided attempt to build a winning argument, the boys banter superficially about intersectionality and radical feminism while ironically reinforcing the sexist attitudes and privilege they aim to challenge.

Anxiety spikes when they clandestinely access technology, strictly prohibited during debate prep, to retrieve a potentially game-winning citation from a "radical Yemeni feminist ... a real sex-symbol feminist" whose name Owen can't recall. Checking Owen's laptop, however, reveals a social media post accusing an unnamed senior Imperium debater of sexual assault. Rather than ethically confronting the gravity of this accusation against them, the boys pivot their debate prep toward damage control, focusing solely on protecting their reputations.

While the setup may seem overly contrived, the playwright's own competitive high school debating experience informs their script, dramatizing how logic and morality can be manipulated into a sport. Mattana's portrayal of Owen is complex and unsettling, embodying contradictions of learned behavior involving overachievement, victimhood, self-righteousness, and insecurity. Jouléy's Scott captures a vulnerability masked by aggressive bravado with gymnastic intensity and charisma, complicated by a homoerotically charged friendship with Jacobson's Jared, a jock whose argument relies on the circular refrain "but I love women." Terry Hu's David, the team advisor and last in the speaking order, is the quietest and smallest, interjecting critical moments that magnify unsettling power dynamics, most notably when emphasizing the small stature of a victim-in-question.

Bespoke school uniforms by costume designer Márion Talán de la Rosa feature short pants and exaggerated contrast pick stitching, amplifying the absurdity and theatricality of privileged prep-school culture. Aided by transportive designs by Fan Zhang (sound) and Cha See (lighting) and movement by Tilly Evans-Krueger, Taymor attempts the script's intended shift from heightened camp to disturbing realism. Some stylized sequences, scripted by Mattana and amplified through Taymor's signature avant-garde aesthetic, come across as awkward or forced. In one choreographed interlude, the characters engage in grotesque expressions of sexualized scribbling while brainstorming onto notebooks. The most effective moments utilize extended pauses and intense blocking that leaves team members isolated or locked in tense stand-offs at classroom corners.

The play's crucial casting of female, gender non-conforming and non-binary performers in drag cleverly conveys gender as performative and artificial, revealing how traditional roles, debates and norms are all inherently learned performances. However, the script's exclusive focus on male characters occasionally feels restrictive and repetitive and results in the re-marginalization of female voices. We never hear the girls' team prep or witness the interactive debate. Although the choice to leave female characters unseen and unheard effectively underscores women's systematic silencing, it also limits the play's impact. One very brief, late introduction of female voices, presented through testimonies and interruptions, suggests potential for some powerful role-doubling, but the play's structural conceit ultimately prevents meaningful representation or productive dialogue among genders.

Trophy Boys certainly excels in exposing the performative contradictions of male allyship, particularly through the teenage debaters' cynical, absurd improvisations, rife with logical fallacies and desperate deflections and rationalizations. Described as "future politicians," the prep school boys adopt ethical stances and rhetorical strategies that can be compared to real-world scandals and troubling backstories of U.S. figures such as Brett Kavanaugh, Anthony Weiner, and Donald Trump. Despite its limitations, Trophy Boys leaves us to consider how cultures of entitlement, perpetuated by privileged men, continue to fail women and society as a whole.