THE STORY: Ben and Jeeter fought in Vietnam, and for thirty years they have remained united by a war that divided the nation. Joined by Jeeter’s new girlfriend and her off-the-grid whiskey-drinking mother, these friends gather at Ben’s remote trailer for one final hurrah. As the night deepens, the past makes a return appearance, and its many ghosts come flickering to life. This is a fierce, funny, haunted play about a friendship that ends—and a war that does not.
“LAST OF THE BOYS is to the Vietnam war what Angels In America was to the AIDS crisis.” —Talkin’ Broadway.
“Dietz has conjured the 1960s and the war in Vietnam better than any playwright has managed to date. Ghosts appear and disappear in this play…and these ghosts are in many ways permanent residents in the bodies and psyches of those who fought in the war, as well as those who became its indirect casualties. Their presence creates a restless, burning, grief-stricken quality—but it doesn’t prevent the eruption of great bursts of pitch black humor; comic explosions that detonate from time to time as if someone had just tripped over a forgotten hand grenade.” —Chicago Sun-Times.
“LAST OF THE BOYS is shattering, and its careful revelations and haunting imagery stick with you long after you leave the theater.” —Windy City Times.
“Steven Dietz’s new play is passionate, funny, altogether a knockout. The indictment of the war in Vietnam is intense and deeply personal…but the play is not a soapbox rant. LAST OF THE BOYS is about the way the past creates the present and the present repeats the past. The final image of Ben ironing an American flag is wrenching. If only we could get the wrinkles out.” —Philadelphia City Paper.
