Given that Angels in America is currently running, The Boys in the Band feels like an odd choice to bring back (previews began on April 30 with the show opening on May 31), even though it boasts a cast that, in addition to Quinto, includes Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, and Jim Parsons—some of the most established out gay actors working today. Despite its historical importance, many consider it dated, a reaction that stems from a fierce protest of the work’s relevance when it was adapted into a film in 1970. The gay men in the play can feel like stereotypes. They’re loud, effeminate, shallow, and full of a powerful shame that didn’t resonate with audiences and readers as years passed.

Quinto doesn’t disagree, alluding to a time in college, at Carnegie Mellon, when he first read scenes from the play. But this time around, there was something that struck a chord. “Everybody is paranoid. Everybody is afraid. Everybody has internalized this hatred they’ve been pummeled with in the real world. How does that inform a character?” he explains before justifying the timeliness of Mantello’s revival.

The Boys in the Band is a contained work, a short play that takes place in one setting over a dinner party between several gay friends. At the time of its pre-Stonewall release, this felt important. Here are a bunch of men who are unapologetically themselves, and the play follows them through a night of heavy drinking, which opens doors to subtle and not so subtle tensions in their dynamics. It feels astonishingly open for its time in the way it broaches gay men’s relationships with themselves, and the ways in which they grapple with their own identities, which are things Quinto feels still matter.

“How far we’ve come socially, politically, legislatively in the last 50 years is one thing, but where are we in terms of self-acceptance? Self-love? I don’t think we live in a culture or society today that’s any more encouraging of loving ourselves than it was 50 years ago,” he says.

Although he appeared in FOX’s 24 and had a leading role on the short-lived but acclaimed VH1 series So Notorious alongside Tori Spelling, Quinto’s breakout was in the NBC sci-fi series Heroes, where he played villain Gabriel “Sylar” Grey. It was a standout role, one that led to his first film opportunity playing Spock in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot.