The Chicago-based troupe the Hypocrites won raves in its hometown with this glum allegory, which explores emotionally charged territory even as the awkward, stylized dialogue keeps the audience at arm's length.
Sean Graney's script does boast a disturbing central conceit: The play is a kind of suicide note left by the central character, a sensitive 9-year-old schoolboy named Johnny (Joseph Binder). Johnny is torn apart by his love for Rachel (Jennifer Grace), a cute but painfully morbid and self-conscious girl who's convinced she's fat. The resident bully (Tim Simons) and mean girl (Stacy Stoltz) make life hell for the pair, and Johnny's attempt at revenge comes back to bite him in the most disastrous way imaginable.
The actors, who are all in their 20s, play out this bleak material against an appropriately barren, whitewashed schoolroom set designed by Graney and director Devin Brain, who paces the action with a surfeit of Pinteresque pauses. Decked out in costume designer Alison Siple's short pants and plaid skirts, the cast injects a sense of inevitability into the ever-escalating tragedy, which asserts that the damage we do to each other begins in childhood.
Unfortunately, the lines Graney gives them are written in an unconvincing version of kid speak (pretentiously set as blank verse in the printed version of the script). Instead of feeling horror at the children's plight, one finds oneself pondering such questions as "Why don't these kids use contractions?" and "Why is their generally age-appropriate vocabulary gussied up with five-dollar words like bastion and machinations?" Other lines are distractingly on-the-nose, as though presaged by a neon sign flashing "Author's Statement." "Nothing is pure, nothing is right with this world.... We have all lost our innocence," says Rachel, having just lost her innocence. A pity, because all that awkward artiness prevents a risk-taking, essentially well-intentioned piece from being as affecting as it might be.
Presented by the Hypocrites
at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., NYC.
Nov. 15-Dec. 2. Tue. -Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 3:30 p.m.
(212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.