Emmanuelle Mattana (Photo: Valerie Terranova)

Trophy Boys

By Deirdre Donovan

Faced with the question, "Has feminism failed women?", a group of elite private school boys set out to argue in the affirmative - fueling the fire of Emmanuelle Mattana's audacious new comedy, Trophy Boys. As they prepare for a high-stakes debate against the girls from a rival girls' school, the play exposes the smug entitlement lurking beneath polished uniforms.

The conceit is sharp and subversive: four private school boys from the fictional Saint Imperium Academy burst into a classroom, brimming with the bravado of teenage masculinity. But in a clever twist, these swaggering lads are portrayed by an all-women and non-binary cast in drag, turning gender performance into both spectacle and critique.

Over a tightly packed 70 minutes, the boys gear up for verbal battle in the Debating Grand Finals. Owen (played by the author), the group's politically astute ringleader, strategizes with teammates Jared (Louisa Jacobson), Scott (Esco Jouléy), and David (Terry Hu), their banter laced with pseudo-intellectualism. But the boys' posturing is shaken when a jarring revelation surfaces-binding them together in unexpected solidarity.

The camp-inflected drag adds levity to the show early on, but it quickly reveals a deeper purpose-reclaiming space for women and femme-presenting people, even in their narrative absence. Dressed in elitist school blazers (costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa), the cast heightens the satire with their continual grandstanding. This both exposes masculinity at its most arrogant and holds up a mirror, if not to the status quo, to what goes on in the corridors of power.

The cast navigates the script's rapid-fire dialogue with remarkable agility and precision. Mattana, Jacobson, Jouléy, and Hu throw themselves into physically charged performances that demand both stamina and athletic grace. So fully do they inhabit their roles that the boundary between actor and character all but vanishes.

Louisa Jacobson, Terry Hu (Photo: Valerie Terranova)

Trophy Boys arrives in New York following multiple sold-out runs in Australia. Billed as a "queer black comedy and drag extravaganza," it marks a bold debut for actor, writer, and voiceover artist Mattana. Drawing on her own experience as a competitive high school debater, Mattana crafts a sharply observed satire that fearlessly tackles the thornier questions of contemporary feminism-delivering arguments with a clarity and precision that makes their implications impossible to ignore.

Sexism, misogyny, and the abuse of power are nothing new-but what makes Trophy Boys so resonant is the way it invites one to reflect on the evolution of feminism in America. From its first wave's fight for suffrage led by figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, to today's fourth wave, the struggle for women's equality has only grown more complex. The villains are no longer so easily named; gone are the days of clearly defined patriarchal antagonists, replaced by subtler, often more insidious forms of bias embedded in social and political structures.

It's often the subtle details that elevate a production, and here, Matt Saunders' inspired set design adds a sly visual punch: a dozen portraits of influential female leaders line the walls, idolized by the boys with zeal.  The rest of the set is understated-a utilitarian classroom setup that serves the action perfectly while letting the satire speak for itself.

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

At its core, Trophy Boys turns scandal on its head, revealing that few characters are truly innocent-whether they've inflicted direct harm on young women or enabled it through complicity with their peers. The play skewers the fragility of masculinity, particularly when these self-proclaimed feminists bristle at being called out for their toxic behaviors by the girls. Or as David sums it: "It's because they hate us. They hate men. That's why feminism has really failed. It's not interested in helping women, it's interested in denigrating men."

With its non-male authorship and casting, Trophy Boys reclaims the narrative of power-voicing truths about gender in our culture that too often go unspoken. The result is a production as bold as it is necessary.

Trophy Boys

At MCC Theater, 511 W. 52^nd. St

For more information, visit www.mcctheater.org.

Running time:  70 minutes with no intermission.

Through August 3