Theater review part deux: This is Our Youth

by Ed Townley of John Garcia's The Column

Upstart Productions is a new company off to a strong, strong start. Their inaugural production, last season's Topdog/Underdog, won critical raves and is a nominee for best non-Equity play in this year's COLUMN Awards.

Although the 2009 theater season is still in its early days, their current production of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, in performance through March 22 at The Green Zone, could well end up on that same short list at this time next year – along with a nomination for best direction and, certainly, at least one acting nomination as well. This is a production people will be remembering and talking about for a long time to come. I urge you to see it while you have the chance.

Lonergan is an intriguing playwright – a sort of American Samuel Beckett. His plays – Lobby Hero is his other well-known work – are like finely detailed miniatures, centered on characters who would never appear on other playwrights' radar, or who might at most serve as stereotypical bit parts in dramas about more important people. To Lonergan, however, every life is important, and every character has a story worth hearing, a perspective worth knowing. Like Beckett's, his characters are lost, adrift, pretending to more control over their own lives than they really possess. Their predicaments are frequently very funny, often moving and disturbing, and sometimes – in unpredictable outbursts of rage and violence – downright scary. This Upstart production captures every nuance, and leads the audience through a deeply involving experience.

The title – This Is Our Youth – feels a little off-putting at first. It sounds rather judgmental and alarmist, like an earnest television documentary from the 1950s about the scourge of juvenile delinquency. In its earliest minutes, the play is equally off-putting. We are in the barren, depressing studio apartment of Dennis Siegler on Manhattan 's Upper West Side. With its mattress on the floor and Ikea-functional table and chairs, there is no sense of warmth or personality.

Ziegler himself is a volatile mess – by turns arrogant, playful, cruel and violent in his opinions, schemes and attitudes. Enter the boyish Warren Straub, who is sometimes Ziegler's friend, sometimes his psychic punching bag, absorbing an ocean of rage left behind by Ziegler's newly-departed girlfriend. Warren has been kicked out of his father's house and needs a place to stay. He arrives with a suitcase filled with treasured collectibles – classic toys, mostly – and a stash of money illicitly and dangerously obtained. Led by Ziegler's obviously deluded opinion of himself as a master wheeler-dealer, the two plot to use some of the money to subsidize a major drug purchase. Some of the blow will fuel an all-night party, and the rest they'll resell to replenish the money and get it back before its absence is noticed.

(The play takes place in the Reagan years of the 1980s, which means that these characters today – assuming they survived their youth – would be in their 40s, maybe early 50s. As I listened to – and laughed at – their demented schemes to turn an urgent crisis into a money-making opportunity, the insane thinking and delusional justifications behind the recent Wall Street implosion suddenly began to make a druggy kind of sense. Did Ziegler become a commodities trader? Probably.)

As Ziegler rushes off to put the plan into motion, Warren is left alone with Jessica, a sort of distant friend/acquaintance on whom he has a hapless crush. What ensues is a delicate, hilarious stoner mating ritual of shallow thoughts masquerading as profundity and hormonal, manipulative feelings passing as love.

As things spiral out of anyone's control, we realize how very sad and desperate these characters are – especially Dennis and Jessica, who try to draw their own flagging senses of self from Warren's basic decency and unwitting energy. All three are drop-out wannabes, living off their wealthy parents even as they scorn those parents' materialistic lives. As the evening unfolds, the title takes on a broader and deeper significance. "This Is Our Youth."

It's not just that these three lost characters are emblematic of their own generation. It's that their stories are our stories – no matter which generation we may claim as our own. Most of us find ourselves, at some time or other, torn between turning our backs on the world we grew up in or allowing ourselves to be drawn into its reassuring structure. All of us try to mask – especially from ourselves – the extent to which we need support and guidance to get us through life's inevitable rough spots.

All three members of the Upstart cast are impressive for the strength and honesty of their work. Matthew M. Fowler as Dennis is not tentative about the character's arrogance and volatility, nor is he afraid to let a deep well of neediness show through when the macho façade begins to crack. Barrett Nash as Jessica is funny and sad in equal measure as a girl/woman torn between wanting to be accepted as a nonconformist and a genuine love for her Mom and her studies at – don't laugh! – the Fashion Institute.

Jessica talks at one point about how impossible it is to know at any moment what the future might hold. I agree. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that in Drew Wall's performance as Warren we may well be seeing the early days of a huge career. On stage virtually from beginning to end, he is the glue that holds the play together, and he is simply magnificent. He is totally present to every moment; we follow Warren's every thought, every feeling – not only through the words of the script, but in Wall's tone, his physicality – even his handling of props. It's the kind of performance that is so real, so non-actory, that it runs the risk of being dismissed as a lucky fluke of casting. But there is skill, training and a deep personal commitment on display. It takes all of that to make a single word – "Noted" – sound funny and revealing in a dozen different ways.

Even three such talented actors could not make this particular script work without a strong, gifted, caring director. Rene Moreno knows these characters and the story they're unfolding. He knows when to accelerate the pace close to the level of farce, and when to slow it down. He is fearless and exact in his use of empty space and time. Each character has long moments of complete silence that are as fully inhabited and tense with meaning as their vivid verbal diatribes.

The set design by Jillian Round is appropriately bleak (although a masking flat behind the bathroom door would prevent the break in illusion that occurs every time it's opened). Lights by Scott Payne and costumes by Kari Engelbrecht – and especially the vital sound design by Mason York – contribute to the impact of the evening.

The only thing this production needs is a larger audience. The performance I attended was perhaps 20% as full as it deserved to be. Something very special is happening on stage at The Green Zone. Don't miss it! I'm certainly glad I didn't.

This Is Our Youth runs through March 22. Purchase tickets online or by calling 877-238-5596.