Lake Water

Actor-author Troy Deutsch is clearly a font of talent, even if his two-hander "Lake Water," about a pair of estranged and disaffected high school seniors in rural Minnesota, is full of incompletely realized promise. Deutsch's characters are vivid, his vision uncompromising, and his acting first-rate. Director Daniel Talbott, who is also a fine playwright (2009's "Slipping"), brings nuance and well-judged pacing to the script, whose basic flaws are the occasional tendency to tread water and an indecisive dramatic journey. Nevertheless, I was glad to make the acquaintance of "Lake Water."

It's clear from the moment that James, sucking on a beer bottle, sits silently on a dock by a stagnant lake as his best friend, Iris, voicing concern, claws through the surrounding weeds to get to him that something is seriously amiss in this relationship. We soon discover that James has taken up with a new set of friends at school, the trashy Stonies, rejecting the more strait-laced and intellectual Iris to be cool. The reasons why are gradually revealed as the two circle and spar, both clearly wanting a rapprochement yet simultaneously afraid of it. The passive-aggressive lad and tightly wound, denial-prone lass eventually get around to the elephant on the coffee table: the suicide three months earlier of their close friend Hilary. Pain and guilt come flooding out, wounding and raw.

Deutsch grew up in the area and was inspired to write the play by a poem his younger sister Greta wrote about the rash of teen suicides in her small town. As both actor and author, he is particularly successful in invoking the troubled James' crushing anomie and percolating self-hatred, as well as the operatic self-obsession of adolescence. Samantha Soule is a young actor with an impressive and growing résumé whom I've often admired in the last few years, and she proves a good match for Deutsch. Her Iris is spiky and self-protective yet possessed of a warm incipient maternity. The two are most convincing as fast friends since childhood, though somewhat less believable as actual teenagers.

There's a handsome and evocative physical production from Eugenia Furneaux-Arends (scenery), Tristan Scott Barton Raines (costumes), Brad Peterson (lights), and Janie Bullard (sound) that's definitely a cut above what is usually found Off-Off-Broadway yet fits snugly into the tiny IRT Theater. In a Playbill.com interview, Deutsch says, "I hope young people will…take a message of hope away." I do too, though what stuck with me the most was the smothering hopelessness of these anguished kids. Deutsch makes it palpable and disturbing, something American society had better address—and soon.

Presented by Neighborhood Productions as part of the IRT 3B Development Series at IRT Theater, 154 Christopher St., 3rd floor, NYC. Sept. 22–Oct. 2. Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com.