‘Trophy Boys' Review: The Nerds' Case Against Feminism

New York Times

25-06-2025

Has feminism failed women?
That's the uh-oh question facing the Imperium School's senior debate team when asked to argue the affirmative in the finals of their league competition. But asserting that proposition against the girls from St. Gratia feels deeply uncomfortable to the four teenage boys who make up the team. Worse, it feels like a sure way to lose.
And losers are not what Imperium's debaters, no matter how nerdy, are expected to be. How will they get into Yale or Harvard — or 'maybe … like … N.Y.U.?' — if they're caught defending the patriarchy? How will Owen, their best speaker, run for president one day, as he intends to, with video of him vivisecting feminism in the ether forever?
That's the setup for Emmanuelle Mattana's 'Trophy Boys,' whose title suggests that what's at stake is more than a contest. Regardless of their protestations of love for their mothers and sisters, the team members are mostly concerned with preserving their privilege as preppies and men. Their feminism is the kind that crumbles the moment it asks something of them beyond lip service.
'Trophy Boys,' which opened Wednesday at MCC Theater, addresses their bad faith in many ways but not, alas, in the most important one: a convincing narrative. Mattana begins with satire so broad it's indistinguishable from burlesque, as the Imperium team arrives at St. Gratia for their power hour of prep time. How stoked they are by the posters of feminist thought leaders — Oprah, Malala, Yoko — plastering the walls! (The classroom set is by Matt Saunders.) 'I am at my most inspired when surrounded by inspiring women,' Owen says.
Owen is portrayed by the playwright, who has made the casting of female, queer, trans and nonbinary actors 'nonnegotiable.' Not that Danya Taymor's production asks us to read their gray flannel, blue blazer, repp tie drag as real. (The costumes are by Márion Talán de la Rosa.) Especially when they roughhouse, leaping on desks and licking their notebooks, the cast overplays the characters' youthfulness, making them seem less like a delivery system for gender commentary than a cartoon version of 'Newsies.'
But if those choices take some of the sting out of the boys' masculine cluelessness and bro-y vulgarity, they also amp up the ambient camp. Jared (Louisa Jacobson) is a sendup of WASP obliviousness, disowning his advantages while pulling a gold watch and Tesla keys from his backpack. Scott (Esco Jouléy) is clearly in love with him, even as he overcompensates with casually sexist remarks. And David (Terry Hu) is an arrogant incel whose most salient contribution to feminism is calling his father a cuck.
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