Kenneth Lonergan's play This is Our Youth garnered enthusiastic reviews during its original limited run Off Broadway in 1996. A revival two years later, again Off Broadway, affirmed it as an insightful, gutsy, street-smart contemporary drama. It isn't a surprise that the recent Steppenwolf production with its starry cast would provide reason enough for a Broadway production.
Eighteen years have now elapsed since New York audiences got their first glimpse into the pathetic, wasteful, and misguided lives of a trio of post-teens — two young men and one woman— the indolent spoiled and rich children on Manhattan's upper West Side. I expect that many will be able to judge for themselves exactly how close or how far they are today from the social, political, and economic issues that conspired to make Lonergan's comically irresponsible, emotionally at-sea characters who they are.
The environment of these crude, rude, sexually active, drug-dealing-and-taking characters is one that is rather more familiarly and nostalgically depicted in the mid-20th century works of J.D. Salinger's “The Catcher in the Rye.” However, the specific environment changed drastically enough by 1982, the time of the play and the time of the Reagan administration. By then the disillusionment with one's family, the country's politics, and the stigma of casually dropping out of college had sent the young on an even-more-unsettling downward spiral.
A universe away from Salinger and the quaint rebukes of the "phony" life that prompted alienation from the likes of Holden, the characters of This is Our Youth are hell-bent on self-destruction. They attempt, mostly in ways that make us laugh uneasily, to turn the world they have inherited on its ear. Nothing about the plot is especially novel, but the wise, often wacky, street talk will prick up your ears as you observe some outrageously rationalized, comical, anti-social antics.
Lonergan, who would follow up his acclaim for This is Our Youth with such laudable plays as The Waverly Gallery, Lobby Hero, and the excellent film, “You Can Count On Me,” need not be concerned that the topicality and the timeliness of his portrait of unfocused and misguided youth have abated, even if the piece seems just a bit less shocking or even alarming in the light of things as they are today. He should be pleased with the casting of the play's three significant roles, as well as the well-focused direction by Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, Of Mice and Men).
Kieran Culkin is already well-established in Lonergan's camp having appeared in his The Starry Messenger as well as in the film “Margaret” that Lonergan wrote and directed. He gives an impressively hyper-kinetic performance as Dennis Ziegler, a loud-mouthed, savvy wheeler-dealer in drugs and anything marketable which includes his best friend Warren Straub's life-long collection of rare memorabilia.
Michael Cera, who is probably best known for the film “Juno,” expertly facilitates his insecure character's unbalanced intelligence with the dopey facade he has so artfully crafted and mastered. An aimless, confused youth who has just absconded with $15,000 in cash belonging to his father, Warren has only a pretty blonde Jessica Goldman (Tavi Gevinson) on his mind.
Gevinson, who only recently graduated from high school, is making the kind of Broadway debut that makes one think she has what it takes for a future on the stage. She is simply terrific as the cleverly coy Jessica, a sporting, sexually permissive sort of girl. She isn't a fool, but she can't say no to spending a night with Warren in the most expensive suite at the Plaza hotel. The irony that pervades the play is the gnawing feeling that these young people are doing all the wrong things for the right reasons.
Complementing the play is Todd Rosenthal's spectacular setting: the lights glow behind the curtained windows of the apartment buildings that rise above and frame Dennis's apartment. That apartment, by the way, is paid for by Dennis's parents to keep him away from home. Despite the mischievously meandering dialogue that blankets most of Act I, This is Our Youth is often funny. And the raucous activities do lead to something consequential finally happening in Act II.
