Edgy Script Depicts Lives of Today's Youth

Author: Liz Braunstein

Behind the sarcastic wit and sharp dialogue of Kenneth Lonergan's "This Is Our Youth" lies a tragicomic story of the loneliness, confusion and displacement of three Upper West Side teens.
Set in 1982, two years into the Reagan Administration, "This Is Our Youth" depicts the lives of adolescents lost amid the yuppie and drug cultures of New York City.
Co-directed by Ben Correale '03 and Tricia Erdmann '03, "This Is Our Youth" ran at the Hepburn Zoo from Jan. 10 to 12, attracting standing room only crowds and many times turning away those unable to get tickets.
Lonergan also wrote "Analyze This," directed "You Can Count On Me," and helped rewrite "Gangs of New York." Although set nearly 20 years ago, Lonergan's screenplay has never been more relevant, depicting family dysfunction and insecurity.
Warren (Liam Aiello '05) turns to his friend and role model Dennis (Dan Eichner '04) after being kicked out of his house and stealing $15,000 from his father. Warren grew up with an abusive father who made a life for himself, only to let his daughter slip away and watch his son drift on the same path.
Aiello brilliantly portrayed the maladjusted Warren with great attention to nuances in the character's personality.
Despite being laced with humor, Warren's awkwardness with girls and his attachment to the past remained heartbreaking to watch.
Dennis descends from a distinguished artist father and an overbearing and overachieving mother. Narcissistic and overconfident, Dennis takes charge of Warren's problems but not without putting down his friend as much as possible. By the end of the play, he breaks down after having an encounter with death.
Eichner's performance carefully maneuvered through Dennis' emotional highs and lows. He skillfully portrayed glimpses of authentic personality and then tried to conceal them.
Warren's genuine affection for Jessica (Ami Formica '03) encourages the audience to hope that they will be together. The remaining scholar of the trio, Jessica, lives with her mother and attends FIT.
Yet Jessica's neurotic and self-centered outlook clashes with Warren's quirky personality. Formica's wonderful performance remained loyal to her character throughout the entire show.
She portrayed Jessica's uncertainty masked by a falsely heightened sense of self-awareness. Formica comments, "The language is so naturalistic that it made our job easy. The script's specificity of dialogue was a huge help in creating moments, building the pace of the show and exploring character quirks."
The dialogue moves fast and the audience can barely catch every one-liner and quick comeback. With all of the fitting "likes," "whatevers," and profanity, the script is true to life. It holds nothing back, creating a raw image of limited possibility and displacement.
In one scene, Jessica says to Warren, "What you're like now has nothing to do with what you're gonna be like. Like right now you're all like this rich, little, pot-smoking burnout rebel, but ten years from now you're gonna be like a plastic surgeon reminiscing about how wild you used to be."
The intense relationships between the three post-adolescents and their parents are brightly illuminated. Warren tries to cope with his abusive father, ultimately deciding to return home. Jessica believes her relationship with her mother is a priority in her life.
Dennis struggles not to duplicate his parents' relationship in the one between him and his girlfriend. Apparently, regardless of how independent they believe themselves to be, the trio can only rebel so far before being restrained by parental influence on their lives.
The stage design worked nicely with the tone of the performance. All the action takes place in the one-room studio apartment. The disheveled room containing the few but meaningful souvenirs mirrors the lives of the teens.
The albums lying in a pile on the floor and the refrigerator with just a gallon of water and an empty box of beer are classic.
Additionally, music was used to help break tension between the characters. In one memorable scene, Jessica and Warren slow dance together both tenderly and ineptly.
Both aspects are controlled by sound-board operator Ben Fainstein '04 and stage manager Xan Williams '03.
The show had a certain "Catcher in the Rye-esque" feeling with Dennis' blaring anger and Warren's disillusionment. The bittersweet and moving ending leaves much for the audience to discuss.
Will Warren and Jessica get back together?
Will Dennis and Warren's friendship change?
Are the lives of these three teens trapped in a pattern pre-created by their parents?
The play marked an unforgettable experience for both the audience and the cast. Aiello commented, "The show became something so much more personally satisfying than your average, not-for-credit Zoo production."
Aiello continued, "I imagine one could attribute the wonderfully unique feel of this play to any number of sources: the beautiful compatibility of our two directors, the unity that existed amongst such a small company, the near impossiblity of massacring Lonergan's startlingly realistic script."
The Winter Term performance of "This Is Our Youth" combined the screenplay's intelligent humor and underlying sense of hopelessness perfectly to produce a profound, sensitive and outright funny show.