Don’t be put off by the prospect of seeing 1968’s seminal gay play The Boys in the Band in an actual apartment—the experience is well worth it.

By seating the audience in the room as a disastrous birthday party begins to unfold, director Jack Cummings III forces us to become uneasy voyeurs as Michael (Jonathan Hammond, who undermines his own fabulous performance with an over-the-top crying jag at the end of the show) and his friends all veer from sassy and tipsy to drunk and disorderly.

Performed without an intermission, the audience has no choice but to stick around for the queasy climax, one that reeks of 1960s psychobabble but somehow feels less mannered or outdated as it might have since it’s happening in our laps.

But what this revival of Matt Crowley’s look at the disconnect between gay men’s private and public lives drives home is how much more interesting gay men were once upon a time. Instead of tribal tattoos and circuit parties, these men camped it up magnificently, dropping Maria Montez references and declaring of a casserole that “Sebastian Venable is now served.”

Crowley’s characters, to a certain extent, are proudly, obstinately Other; today, if a gay man waltzed into a party and dropped a deep curtsey, he’d be shunned as effeminate just as often by gay men who think they’ve moved past such outdated stereotypes as the heterosexuals who would feel uncomfortable. Conversation is prized above all else; just compare the whip-smart banter that Crowley has provided his characters (along with this cast’s razor-sharp characterizations) with the flat and heavy-handed dialogue between the two characters in the recent, abysmal Loaded.

The dream team of an ensemble is more than a match for Crowley’s rapid-fire dialogue, spitting out insults, jokes and heartfelt confessions with flair to spare (though it would be nice if Jon Levenson’s sing-songy delivery as birthday boy Harold didn’t make him sound quite so much like a serial killer). Hammond, recently freed from the dry and dull Ragtime revival on Broadway, brings a deep-seated rage to the bitter and self-loathing Michael that’s excruciating to view in such close quarters. John Wellmann is a bitchy, queeny delight as Emory, mincing to and fro and dropping screamingly funny bon mots as casually as if he were flicking dust off his fashionable ascot.

Though the self-flagellating nature of some of the characters, all of whom seem distinctly uneasy at times about being gay, can be off-putting, there’s something refreshing about seeing a gay play that isn’t about politics or AIDS. Michael, Emory, Harold and all the rest were content to live their lives with the style and humor of the best B-movie queens. They may now seem like relics from the past to jaded audience members, but at least they had fun.

>The Boys in the Band

Through Mar. 28, Michael’s Apartment, 37 W. 26th St (betw. Broadway & 6th Ave.), 866-811-4111; $38-$45.