The title alone probably brings you back to the days of early adolescence, when a game of spin the bottle presented the nerve-racking yet anticipated chance to casually lock lips with another (perhaps for the first time). If it doesn't, Stephen Levenson's "Seven Minutes in Heaven" lets you relive that time, in a high school drama that manages to distill the paradoxical angst and tedium of adolescence into only an hour.
You don't need the program note ("1995. After Kurt, before Monica.") to be hit immediately and repeatedly by set designer Daniel Zimmerman's period references. The basement turned den, plastered with Pink Floyd posters, houses a couch that seems to have been salvaged from the "Wayne's World" lot. Amy Altadonna's sound design has Nirvana and the Cure blaring during blackouts, and the audience—mostly children of the 1980s, now mid-20s hipsters—nods along to the music in recognition and approval.
The circumstance—seven suburban teens, each more self-conscious than the last, come together at a party—recalls either a high school soap or an after-school special. All the requisite character tropes are there: the hot girl, the less-hot-and-bitter one, the innocent, the class clown, the geek, the jock (Joe Tippett, the standout in the cast). But for a high school drama set in the age of "Dawson's Creek," Levenson's play is unusually restrained, light on melodrama and careful with cliché, mostly forgoing romantic subplots and morality tales. Aside from a thin story line involving a Beckettian guest—they wait; he never arrives—there is little dramatic urgency. Instead, Levenson is a portrait painter, presenting seven youths embarrassed yet eager to bare their souls.
Too often we see these inner workings in confessional moments that pepper the dialogue. The action freezes, the lighting dims, and a spotlight shines on the subject. Some of these moments (describing a sexual encounter or an abusive family) creep into self-parody, but Levenson is aware enough of the danger to include some unwilling teens who, even in these moments, are too self-conscious to confess.
More successful is the use of multiple overlapping conversations, with all their retorts, subtle jabs, and ill-conceived teenage wisdoms. ("The truth isn't mean; it's just true.") Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt spreads the verbal sparring across the stage, allowing us to hyperactively ingest it in a sensory overdose.
For a production so seemingly stuck in time, "Seven Minutes in Heaven" admirably transcends it, reliving not a period in time but a period in life. In a confessional, class clown Derek (Teddy Bergman), projecting himself into the future, notes that he won't remember the names of his friends but will remember the sensory things: "the smell of Margot's basement, like rug burn and salt and vinegar." As the play ends, what remains are not the scrunchies and Sonic Youth but the sharply rendered highs and heartaches of teenagerhood that, like it or not, stay with us forever.
Presented by Colt Coeur at Here Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave., NYC. June 6–20. Wed.–Fri., 7 p.m.; Sat., 7 and 10 p.m. (Additional performances Tue., May 15, 7 p.m., and Sun., May 20, 2 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.here.org.