Playwright: Nick Jones
At: Smoke & Mirror Productions at the Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave.
Phone: (773) 409-1000; $15
Runs through: June 22
George is a romantic. He reads Martin Buber and believes that sex should be Something Special. Jamie is a Goth-rocker in a band called the Bloody Bitches. She grooves on Ludwig Van and believes sex is the universal solution. Steve, George’s best buddy, is an amoral schadenfreudian whose philosophy is ‘women want a cave man.’ Jamie’s boyfriend, Charles, is a rationalist who hustles at chess tournaments and philanders with such cool caddishness that even the promiscuous Steve calls him a scumbag.
Other denizens of this microcosm include David, the sardonic JavaLove baristo, Carol, a blonde of little brain, and Genevieve, a therapist turned phone-sex gabber. Most of them have been acquainted since second grade, live amid a welter of educational paperbacks and speak in the stilted idiom characteristic of loners who converse more with books, song lyrics and screenplays than with actual people.
Oh, they’re cute enough to have their own TV series—Steve’s relationship with his parents could by itself sustain a season, as could the backstory on how the twentysomething David acquired the capital to start his own business. This makes all the more commendable playwright Nick Jones’ refusal to reduce his characters to media-promulgated stereotypes. I mean, George is a college-age male and he’s still a VIRGIN, for chrissakes! When did you last see one of THOSE in an artistic economy dominated by demographic appeal? And where most authors would take the easy Jack-has-his-Jill route in wrapping up his protagonists’ fates, Jones starts his post-adolescent pilgrims on their journey to maturity —George stops recycling booklore and speaks for himself, Jamie acknowledges her emotional vulnerability—while leaving enough unanswered questions to pique our curiosity.
The actors—barely older than the characters they play—deliver sensitive performances devoid of egodefensive swagger. Ron Ward hints at the intelligence simmering beneath Steve’s slackerly stance, and Kerri Van Auken—a Faith-the-Slayer lookalike who swings a mean shortsword in a Dream Sequence duel—likewise injects poignancy into what could have been simply another leather-grrrl clone. All unite to make for a sweet, if lightweight, look at bright kids too unsure of where ‘wild’ is to go there. You remember THEM, don’t you?