Be Aggressive

Playwright: Annie Weisman

At: Rivendell Theatre Ensemble at Breadline Theatre, 1802 West Berenice Avenue Phone: (773) 472-1169; $18

Runs through: May 10

So why are a pair of, like, high school cheerleaders from sunny California doing a Thelma-and-Louise, financed by cash extorted from parents or stolen from employers? For starters (duh!), they’re not cheerLEADERS, but ‘spotters’—low-status supernumeraries who nevertheless believe the rallying cries they recite. Laura has recently lost her mother to a hit-and-run accident, and her father now expects his daughter to assume the household duties. Leslie is a Tobacco Belt-émigré, whose divorced mother bribes her to keep secret the reasons for their migration.

Their mission fueled by the desperation of adolescent affluence, With a discarded brochure their only map, the teenage fugitives are bound for an elite cheerleader college in the terra incognita of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But don’t we know that after escaping the Land Of Energina Kissava Mega-Cleanse Smoothies to venture into the Heart Of Darkness, these impatient waifs—and their likewise insecure parents at home, too—will come to acknowledge what is truly important in life? And that even when the prize proves to be as elusive as the Holy Grail, the search will more than justify the undertaking?

To us inlanders, what author Annie Weisman proposes seems incredible: Pompom-waving as the road to empowerment and self-discovery? Beachfront Barbies as heroes on a quest for fulfillment? But since its premiere at San Diego’s LaJolla Playhouse, this chick-buddy saga has become hot property on the regional circuit. Some of this might be its commercial potential: the play’s scene changes are orchestrated as rah-rah formations (Christine Camel is credited in the playbill as ‘cheer consultant’), allowing us to ogle physically fit babes without being labeled sexist pigs, even as we applaud the flight of our young pilgrims from stifling slavery to freedom and independence.

The sensitive cast assembled by Edward Sobel for this Rivendell production—featuring Jennifer Kern and Krista Lally, two of Chicago’s most underrated ingenues, as the valleyspeak Huckleberry Finns—delve beneath the stereotypes to render Be Aggressive an intense and articulate coming-of-age fable rooted firmly in American literary myth, while never betraying the accuracy of the world it purports to portray. Go, team, go!