By: Laura Fernandez, Molly McAndrew, Claire Rychlewski and Sarah Winters
At: Pegasus Players at Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson
Phone: 773-878-9761; $12
Runs through: Jan. 27
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
One of the pleasures of seeing Pegasus Players' Annual Chicago Young Playwrights Festival is seeing teenagers' short plays professionally produced on stage. For the 22nd edition, Pegasus Players has chosen four works by young women out of more than 700 entries from Chicago Public Schools.
Some may question the quality of a few selections in this year's edition. In some cases you feel works were chosen because important issues are brought up.
This is the case with Sarah Winters' Daydream Nation, which has teenagers voicing their concerns and drifting apart due to their differing takes on where the Bush administration is taking the country. Alas, Winters doesn't succeed in making the characters more that mouthpieces after the promising first scene of a booze-filled prom night. Winters throws in new details and motivations, making the two scenes of Daydream Nation feel like they're from different plays.
Molly McAndrew does a better job of tying everything together in her historical what-if play A Rose in the Royal Court. Here, a feisty groundskeeper's daughter named Rosalind gets a brief reprieve from a troubled family life when she becomes the muse for a certain William Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet. It's all a bit too cutesy and reminiscent of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, but McAndrew makes the play fun by upending some of the stereotypical traits of love-struck girls.
Much more serious and affecting fictional historical drama is in Coffee Girl. Here, playwright Claire Rychlewski's follows a young slave girl who makes a painful realization that her father is the plantation's white slave owner, following a violent incident with his jealous wife. The rawness of this difficult American subject doubled with the unflinching acting by Aaya McDaniel as the girl, Margaret, and Taylar as her grandmother make Coffee Girl an unsettling piece that pushes all the right emotional buttons.
More inspired work is seen with the dazzling dialogue for the Southern diner workers in Laura Fernandez's Blooming Flowers in Weeds. Eliza Stroughton has a field day as the chipper waitress, Candy, who takes in a troubled teenager Julia ( Victoria Caciopoli ) who hangs out in the diner to avoid a troubled situation at home. The ending may be melodramatic, but it provides a big finish and helps to highlight the humanity of Fernandez's working class characters.
Even if some of the selected plays' quality is in question, this young playwrights edition is tops in production values and acting. Set designer Jack Magaw frames the stage with a lively collage of historical teenage portraits which glimmer game-show style by lighting designer Diane Fairchild. The acting company is also to be commended as they morph through multiple roles and professionally play the dialogue.