If you believe the Op-Eds, men are in a bad way these days: perpetually beleaguered and isolated, if not irredeemably toxic. But two lively new plays in London suggest an alternative, sanguine vision of 21st-century masculinity, foregrounding generous portrayals of male bonding and togetherness.

In For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, six Black British men participate in a group-therapy session punctuated by bursts of song. The show, written and directed by Ryan Calais Cameron, is a male-centric spin on Ntozake Shanges 1976 work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, in which women of color recount their experiences of racism and gendered violence through performance poetry, music and dance.

For Black Boys runs at the Garrick Theater in the West End through June 1. On a stage decked out in bright, blocky primary colors like a pop music video, the men called Onyx, Pitch, Jet, Sable, Obsidian and Midnight, each a shade of black bare their souls one by one. Every so often they morph into a 90-style boy band, delivering neatly choreographed, crowd-pleasing renditions of R&B classics like Blackstreets No Diggity and India.Aries Brown Skin. (The set design is by Anna Reid, the choreography by Theophilus O. Bailey.)

Banter is their love language. Jet (an engagingly plaintive Fela Lufadeju) is joshed for wearing chinos a white affectation prompting a spiky discussion on the vexed subject of acting Black. Gradually, deflection and bravado give way to introspection and insight as the men unpack the perniciousness of machismo in their lives: Jet recalls how his father refused to seek cancer treatment for fear of appearing unmanly; Sable, a self-styled Casanova (Albert Magashi, suitably strutting) concedes that insecurity might be driving his philandering ways; a flashback scene depicts Obsidian (Mohammed Mansaray) reluctantly engaging in senseless violence for street cred, with life-changing consequences.

The play ends with an upbeat mantra about keeping your chin up in the face of adversity. Its core message is about collective solidarity: By embracing emotional vulnerability and opening up to one another, young men can build support systems that will help them overcome lifes hardships. And the audiences enthusiasm at the curtain call suggested to a sense of recognition: These sentiments rang true, and it meant something to see them conveyed from a West End stage.

But that easy accessibility comes at a price. The six characters feel like stock types, their respective travails a little too generic to be truly compelling each existing, rather like pictures in a high-school textbook, to illustrate a trope. This is echoed in dialogue that relies heavily on melodramatic clich (one character tells us his father was destructive like a wrecking ball and I was the collateral damage) and lingo taken from social sciences (Were not monoliths!). Despite its exuberant energy, For Black Boys is ultimately somewhat two-dimensional.

Just around the corner at @sohoplace, through May 4, Red Pitch, written by Tyrell Williams and directed by Daniel Bailey, tells a touching story of three 16-year-old aspiring soccer players from a London housing project. As they train for an upcoming, once-in-a-lifetime tryout with a professional club, the trio engage in the daft patter peculiar to adolescence: a fizzing, complex mix of insecurity, aggression and fraternal tenderness.

Bilal (Kedar Williams-Stirling) is ambitious and driven. Omz (Francis Lovehall) is hotheaded, prone to self-sabotage; he is often unlikable, but his flaws are all too human. The goalkeeper Joey (Emeka Sesay) has the funniest stage presence of the three, whether delivering wry quips, demonstratively folding and unfolding his arms, or slipping into his fathers Nigerian accent when hes getting worked up. The boys teenage mannerisms the moody sulks and flounces, the primal urgency with which they scoff snacks are affectionately played for laughs.

A municipal soccer pitch takes up the whole stage in Amelia Jane Hankins pleasing set. In contrast to another recent London soccer play, Dear England, where the sports choreography was less than convincing, the cast here is at ease performing sprints and passing drills. A series of dream sequences in which the boys imagine future sporting glory are strikingly rendered by spotlights, audiovisual effects conjuring camera flashes and the roar of a crowd, and the actors slow-motion movements. (The lighting is by Ali Hunter, the sound by Khalil Madovi.)

The poignancy of Red Pitch derives from the near-impossibility of a happy ending: In an ultracompetitive field, the three friends wont all be signed by the club, and seem destined to go their separate ways. We are catching them at a specific, fleeting moment in time, on the threshold of the next phase of life. The line between sentimentality and schmaltz can be fine, but Williamss taut script treads it nimbly. (The plays running time is exactly 90 minutes, the length of a regulation soccer match a nice touch.)

For Black Boys and Red Pitch are both earnest, uplifting evocations of male camaraderie by emerging British playwrights; both also achieved notable word-of-mouth success during runs in small theaters before transferring to the West End. But they showcase markedly different storytelling styles: For Black Boys, with its didactic enumeration of societal ills, has the feel of a PowerPoint presentation; its bracing directness befits the urgency of its message, but as a piece of art it never quite transports us. By contrast, Red Pitch draws us in with an absorbing if conventional linear narrative, and wears its wisdom lightly. The first is mere performance, the latter true theater.

Stephen Adams, a billionaire whose anonymous $100 million gift to the Yale School of Music granted a tuition-free education to talented students embarking on careers in a capricious profession, died on March 14 at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 86.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Denise (Rhea) Adams.

Mr. Adams, who graduated from Yale College in 1959, was not a musician himself. But after he turned 55 and was already a prosperous business executive and wine collector, he became an amateur piano player.

In 1999, he marked his classs 40th-anniversary reunion by donating $10 million to the music school the largest contribution it had ever received. Six years later, he and his wife surpassed that record when they made their $100 million gift, anonymously.

They did not publicly reveal their identity as the donors until 2008, when Mr. Adams was asked to confirm their contribution by an interviewer from Wine Spectator magazine. He agreed to do so then, he said, to spur other contributors as his 50th-anniversary class reunion approached.

My wife and I are Christians, and the Bible speaks of giving in secret, Mr. Adams told The Yale Daily News in 2009.

In that same article, Michael Friedmann, a professor of theory and chamber music, said, Musicians, as opposed to doctors or lawyers, are not in a position to repay educational loans easily, and the profession has a capricious opportunity structure. He added, The new financial conditions at the school, however, put musicians in a very different position in relation to their post-Yale careers.

In 2013, Yale announced that the campus music complex, which includes Leigh Hall and Hendrie Hall, would be known as the Adams Center for Musical Arts.

Among the other charitable causes Mr. Adams and his wife supported through their Adams Family Foundation were the Adams Neurosciences Center and the Stephen and Denise Adams Center for Parkinsons Disease Research at Yale; the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he endowed three professorships; World Vision, a global Christian humanitarian organization; and the Veritas Forum, which hosts discussions about philosophy, religion and science for Christian students on college campuses.

In an interview with Yale Alumni Magazine in 2008, Mr. Adams explained that in the mid-1990s, with the encouragement of his wife, an artist, he had begun going to New York City twice a month to take piano lessons from a classmate who after graduating from Yale College had earned a graduate degree from the music school.

I would practice about an hour a day, and I got to the point that I wasnt all that bad, he said. Then, a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinsons. The right hand got to be a little bit of an issue: It had some tremors.

His decade or so of piano playing was mostly behind him when he decided to make the gift to the music school that would relieve future alumni of tuition, and the lingering debt of student loans, as they struggled to begin their careers.

Stephen Adams was born on Nov. 7, 1937, in Minneapolis to Cedric Adams, a columnist for The Minneapolis Star and a broadcaster for the local radio station WCCO, and Bernice (Lenont) Adams, who managed the household.

After graduating from the Blake School in Minneapolis, he earned a bachelors degree from Yale in 1959 and a masters in business administration from Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1962. In 2006, he received the Ernest C. Arbuckle Award for management leadership from the Stanford business schools alumni association; in 2009, the Yale Alumni Association awarded him its Medal of Honor.

Because most of his assets were privately held, Mr. Adams was not well known. He became a billionaire by investing in or licensing franchises in an eclectic mix of mundane businesses, including community banks, soda bottling companies, outdoor advertising, local radio and television stations, recreational vehicles, camping supplies, and vineyards in Californias Napa Valley and in Bordeaux, France. (He preferred a glass or two of red with dinner, from his own vineyards in France.)

His brands included Affinity Group, Camping World and Adams Outdoor Advertising.

Mr. Adamss first three marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife of 32 years, he is survived by four sons, Stephen, Mark, Kent and Scott, from his first marriage; his stepchildren, Weesa, Forrie and Nick Burke, from his second marriage; and nine grandchildren. His brothers, David and Cedric II, died before him.

In the Wine Spectator interview, Mr. Adams said one reason he never craved public attention and had made his donation to the Yale School of Music anonymously was that he felt deprived of a private life as a child because his father, as a local media personality, was too popular in his hometown.

Our family couldnt go out to a meal without being interrupted by people who wanted to shake my fathers hand or get his autograph, he said. His life wasnt his own. I decided then that Id go the other direction in my life.