Theater News

Boy for Sale

An award-winning production of Alan Bowne’s Forty-Deuce is revived.

New York City


Last October, eXposed Brick Productions presented Forty-Deuce at Chashama on 42nd Street as part of Spotlight On’s second annual Halloween Festival, and the show subsequently won three major festival awards. Now it has been revived with the cast intact for a run at The Duplex. Alan Bowne’s unsparing play concerns the seamy underworld of male prostitution in the Times Square area circa 1981. In its opening moments, the pimp Augie (Sean Twomey) is incensed to find an underage youth named John Anthony (Jeremy Roland) passed out in his “facilities.”

Augie berates the desperate hustler Ricky (Scott Amen) for overdosing the kid; Mitchell (Chad L. Schiro), another member of Augie’s stable, looks on.




Augie tells Ricky that he’d better figure out what to do about John Anthony, whom no one yet realizes is dead.

Two more of Augie’s hustlers, Crank (Sean Blanco, left) and Blow (Dave Gueriera), turn up and are apprised of the situation.

The tension grows when Augie realizes that John Anthony is dead. This is a shock for Blow, who had developed an affection for the innocent kid.

Lamenting John Anthony’s demise, Blow delivers a moving monologue about young gay youth being thrown out of their homes by homophobic family members. Ricky hatches a plan to pimp John Anthony to the rich Mr. Roper and pin the boy’s death on him.

The unsuspecting Roper (Anthony Henderson) arrives.






It turns out that Roper is a past customer of several of Augie’s boys.



Ricky and Blow bait Roper.

Left alone with John Anthony’s body, the pathetic Roper is so high on drugs that he fails to realize the boy is dead. In a long, rambling speech, he reveals that he has turned into a monster — and he knows it. Directed by Damon W. Arrington, Forty-Deuce continues its run at The Duplex every Wednesday at 9:30pm through November 24