...The Last Five Years, and, given the ridiculously successful track record in drama of the first year of Playhouse on Park, I'm fully expecting this to be another great show. After all, in this blog I have given HUGE "thumbs up" for their previous productions of Collected Stories, Trapezium, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), and was quite entertained by Lost in Yonkers, as well. (But, to be candid, I wasn't too fond of the "Mrs. Bob Cratchit" Xmas-time piece.)
I haven't posted since I went to see This is Our Youth earlier this month, which I admit I was not expecting to enjoy since I've never really known any cocaine-dealing slackers -- not even when I was young. (Indeed, when I first moved from Cincinnati to Washington DC, the then Murder/Drug/Drug Murder-Capital-of the US, to go to grad school in the mid-80s, I wondered why the news always reported various police raids on places not too far from the boarding house in which I was living as raids on "known crack houses." KNOWN BY WHOM? Not I! And, if the police knew about them, why were they just raiding them now?! )
Anyway, This is Our Youth was wonderfully acted (by Robert DaPonte, Zack Robidas, and Alison Barton) and directed (by Matt Pfeiffer) and, even as I was at first less-than-inclined to like any of the characters, the intelligent script by Kenneth Lonergan and believable performances made me care, and made me care a lot, about these young people adrift in Reagan's "Morning in America." It was suspenseful because I really was unsure how it would end for any of the three characters, and there was a second act soliloquy by "Dennis" (Robidas) that was truly a tour-de-force.
In short, I eagerly await our next visit to Playhouse on Park for The Last Five Years because, if their first year of work has told us anything, it's that the trip will be more than worth it.
See you there!
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