Opening Day

It's opening day for "This is Our Playhouse," the blog that keeps you updated about the summer season of West Hartford's very own Playhouse on Park. As the creator of "This is Our Playhouse," let me introduce myself: my name is Naomi, and I am one of five summer interns at Playhouse on Park. An average college student who fell in love with theater during high school, I got lucky enough to spend this summer reading plays, seeing plays, writing about plays and starting my own blog about (surprise) plays. I'll be writing all about what's going on at Playhouse on Park this summer, and I hope you'll respond to my views and post your own!

So my first post is about This is Our Youth, the edgy first production of Playhouse on Park's summer season. As an intern, I got to see the "pre-preview"- an intimate performance of the show two nights before opening night. Although the audience contained only ten people (including a sprightly photographer) the actors treated us to a performance-ready production that displayed their immense talent as well as the talents of the writer, Kenneth Lonergan, and the director, Matt Pfieffer.

Before the show, I had been warned by my superiors at the Playhouse. There's drugs, they said. There's language, they cautioned. It's "out there" and risky, they alerted me. So I was expecting to be put off. I was expecting to be disgusted and uncomfortable and ready to walk out. I was expecting to have to force myself to like it so I could genuinely do my job of convincing others to attend. I was expecting a stomachache.

But I didn't get one. About half way through the first act, I recognized This is Our Youth. I recognized it because it spoke to me and drew me in. I recognized it as good theater. The story takes place in 1982 in New York City's Upper West Side, and tells a story about three kids in their early twenties working through issues regarding independence, friendship and mortality. The play essentially gives a twenty-four-hour snapshot into the semi-pathetic lives of drug-dealer Dennis Ziegler (Zack Robidas) and his sidekick Warren Straub (Robert DaPonte). Fading in and out of this snapshot is Jessica Goldman (Alison Barton), the girl of Warren's dreams who has enough fashion sense to make up for both Dennis' and Warren's grunge.

Everything I had been warned about was true. There were drugs, f-bombs, and a whole slew of insults that will never ever cross my own lips. But they all helped to tell the story. The profanity was natural coming from Dennis and Warren, and the presence of illegal substances spurred major plot events and successfully filled out the scene of 1980s New York that Lonergan was trying to create. What I identified most with, however, was not the obsessive

drug use or the dangers of living in 1980s New York City. What really drew this play beyond the confines of time and place were the moments of awkward girl-guy confrontation and the scenes of true and intense friendship between Dennis and Warren. Behind the

characters' acid tongues and devil-may-care attitudes lies a dynamite script and a trio of tragic characters that resonate soundly from generation to generation- especially with each generation's youth.

Left to right: Dennis (Zack Robidas), Warren (Robert DaPonte) and Jessica (Alison Barton)