LOS
ANGELES TIMES
Aug.
27, 2004
THEATER
BEAT
Post-adolescent
groping--for meaning and true love as well as for cheap sex--drives Wendy
MacLeod's aptly named "Juvenilia." In roughly real time over the
course of one aimless Friday night, the play traces the would-be peccadilloes
of four twentysomethings on the verge of dubious graduation from a second-rate
liberal arts college.
MacLeod
seems to aim for a trenchant, post-politically correct tone in her treatment of
class, race and gender politics, as the play's three well-off white students
try to rope a fourth--a middle-class African-American woman--into a voyeuristic
"three-way."
But
the effect here is Neil LaBute Lite, at least in director Leslie Morgan's
overly emphatic new production. Paradoxically, by having her actors overplay
both the comedy and the straight stuff--in the characters' knowing pop-culture
parlance, by putting everything in quotation marks--Morgan takes the edge off
McLeod's material.
To
be sure, the broad strokes are in the script: Brodie (Scott Butler) is a macho
slut who pretends not to care for anyone; his steely, perfect girlfriend
Meredith (Vanessa Long) has the precocious cynicism of the alternately spoiled
and neglected rich kid. Roommate Henry (Ryan Churchill) is sensitive and needy,
a confused good guy with a crush on their neighbor Angie (Chris Brown), a
professed Christian who proves more game than they'd imagined.
The
sweetly befuddled Churchill comes off best, though even he's mugging a bit.
Like Scott Butler's overly tidy dorm room set, the performances in
"Juvenilia" are just too simply drawn to reveal any messy truths.
Count this a college try.
--Rob Kendt
"Juvenilia," the Faultline Theatre Company at
the Gardner Stages, 1501 N. Gardner St., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays-Sundays.
Ends Sept. 12. $15. (323) 461-0689. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.