The Beautiful People is an ironic title for a play about two ugly, dumb, dangerous teenagers. They are the only characters in Tim Venable’s powerful drama which is now in a world-premiere run at Rogue Machine, directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos.
We find the two 17-year-olds hanging out in “a basement in suburban America.” They spend their time mindlessly, playing video games, drinking White Surge, trading insults, cracking wise, filling the crummy room with bursts of profanity and invective. Once in a while they switch on the TV, flitting from show to show, pausing only to sneer at the political leaders sounding off in the news reports and/or to leer at the attractive female models in the commercials. They hate just about everything and everyone they encounter in mainstream pop culture, except for punk musicians like Marilyn Manson and The Smashing Pumpkins.
They also take pleasure in competing against each other, sometimes in a game of midget basketball, other times when boasting about the size of their dicks. Often their rivalry leads to fisticuffs, bloody noses and tears. Watching them act like idiots gets to be tiresome, until deeper layers of character are revealed and their despicable behavior takes on a more sinister hue.
This happens when the weaker, more pathetic kid (Justin Preston) reacts to the extreme abuse of his alpha male friend (Alex Neher) by whipping out a pistol and threatening to blow his brains out. That’s followed, a bit later, when the two of them spew hatred for just about everyone they go to school with (especially the snooty girls who refuse to give them sex)...and then brandish a map of the school. It becomes clear that for the past ninety minutes we have been in the company of two incipient serial killers.
Venable’s portrait of these alienated, misanthropic dehumanized American kids is painfully relevant and shocking. It’s a sad commentary on our culture and values that we keep producing twisted youngsters like that.
The Beautiful People has been given a splendid production by Rogue Machine. The set, direction and acting are first-rate, commendable. This is intimate theater at its daringly best.
