This is Our Youth
This Is Our Youth is a 1996 play by American dramatist and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan.
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[edit] Production history
Originally produced by The New Group, the play opened at the INTAR Theatre in New York City in October 1996. It later opened at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre in November 1998. It was directed by Mark Brokaw, with Mark Rosenthal as Dennis, Mark Ruffalo as Warren, and Missy Yager as Jessica.[1] It later played popularly for some time in London's West End produced by Phil Cameron for Background, Clare Lawrence and Anna Waterhouse for Out of the Blue (for and on behalf of Back to Blue Limited).
[edit] Cast history
The play has become very popular among the younger theater generation for its edgy issues and modern themes. It has seen its fair share of popular film actors in its roles, many of them in their first stage role. At the Garrick Theatre in the West End it featured Hayden Christensen, Matt Damon, Colin Hanks, and Chris Klein as Dennis, Jake Gyllenhaal, Casey Affleck, Kieran Culkin, and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Warren, and Anna Paquin, Summer Phoenix, Alison Lohman, Heather Burns as Jessica.
A possibly revival may be staged in New York featuring Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin. (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46105)
[edit] Original title
This is Our Youth was originally titled Betrayal by Everyone when it premiered as a one-act in 1993 at the Met in a festival of short plays.[2]
[edit] Plot
The play takes place in Dennis Ziegler's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in March, 1982. Dennis's friend Warren Straub, a dejected 19-year-old, has just been kicked out of his house and stolen $12,000 from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father. Dennis, the more wily and domineering of the two, spends some of the money on cocaine, hoping to sell it to a friend of his for much more. Jessica Goldman, an "anxiously insightful" fashion student, comes over and Warren hopes that he can use the money to entice her into bed.
The play explores timeless issues of adolescence and maturity, as well as the Reagan Era in which it is set: the characters feel adrift in a country of the 1960s-style liberalism.
[edit] Reception
Writing in The New York Times, critic Peter Marks called the play "a revealing and offbeat dissection of its world," adding, "It is not easy to find love and humor in the middle of nowhere. But with the skill of a first-rate creative team, even nowhere can be someplace special."[3] Reviewing the 1998 production two years later, Marks wrote, "'This Is Our Youth' is back, and not a moment too soon. In a season in which some of the wise men of the theater have been trying to force-feed insipid fare like 'Stupid Kids' and 'Footloose' to young audiences, it's sheer relief to celebrate the return of a rambunctious and witty play about wayward teen-agers and post-adolescents that doesn't turn youthful travails into plastic rap." Marks cited the play's "indelible impression," the playwright's "unfailing antennae," writing, "'This Is Our Youth'-- by turns caustic, cruel and compassionate -- is the real real world."[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Peter Marks, "Heading for Hopeless, but Not Gone Yet," The New York Times, October 31, 1996.
- ^ http://www.enotes.com/this-our-youth/
- ^ Peter Marks, "Heading for Hopeless, but Not Gone Yet," The New York Times, October 31, 1996.
- ^ Peter Marks, "Folkways of Spoiled, Dissolute West Side Teen-Agers," The New York Times, November 4, 1998.
[edit] External links
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