Enoch Abraham's Karma._________
Playwrights: Enoch Abraham ( Karma ) , Scarlett Mays ( In Your Dreams ) , Aaron Abolt and Marisha Hekmatpour ( Kid Kuisine )
At: Pegasus Players, 1145 W. Wilson
Phone: 773-878-9761; $12
Through Jan. 28
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Now that Pegasus Players' 21st Young Playwrights Festival is old enough to legally drink and gamble, does this mean it's turning its back on teenage angst and drama? Hardly.
Drawn from an annual competition for budding playwrights in Chicago Public Schools, this year's winning trio of plays is bursting with teenage hormones and loads of humor.
Pegasus Players handsomely produces each play with superlative resources ranging from local playwrights like Mia McCullough serving as student mentors to Tom Burch's gritty Chicago city set of elevated train beams plastered with ads targeting teenagers as consumers.
Karma, a teenage urban romantic comedy by former Northside College Prep student Enoch Abraham, aptly fits in the advertiser landscape since its clueless-with-love poet protagonist is always imagining himself as a hip-hop sugar daddy with an irresistible way with the ladies. Truth be told, he's a shy guy who can't see the close friend who is the better match for him than the stuck up ( yet insecure ) ice princess he's pursuing.
Abraham's basic plot is tried and true, but his way of capturing dialogue between his street savvy teens is masterful. The cast, under Tiffany Trent, finesses the dialogue so it nearly sounds natural and free-flowing. Taj McCourd is a standout as the mixed-up hero Thomas Blake, as is Osiris Khepera as his wise and scheming friend Terrence.
Scarlett Mays' play In Your Dreams also pokes fun at teenage obsessions with hip-hop artists, though it gets hampered down by a simple sitcom plotting that clashes with a tacked-on serious subplot
As a senior at Curie Metropolitan High School, Mays certainly nails the squealing girls Sparkle ( Jehan Whittaker ) and Ebonie ( LaNisa Renee Frederick ) as they try to sneak into a PowWow and Chuck Black 18-and-older concert. Director Ilesa Duncan's slapstick routines and Mays' exuberant dialogue are both frequently funny. But the play suffers with the sudden introduction of a cousin with HIV who intrudes on the play as if an old WB/UPN TV sitcom was being scolded by a preachy ABC After-School TV special.
Kid Kuisine, a collaborative effort by Aaron Abolt and Marisha Hekmatpour of Whitney Young Magnet High School, also has the hallmarks of standard sitcom situations. But the actors under director Alex Levy each enliven the clever writing so deftly that you don't mind.
Nick Lewis stars as the put-upon hero, Charlie, who regresses to his childhood when he comes down with chicken pox, pink eye and an ear infection. Howie Johnson—as Charlie's leaching friend, Buck—also helps bring in the nearly non-stop laughs he tries to force his friend from his self-induced childhood funk.
Although not all groundbreaking, each play in the festival bursts with humor and easily shows why young voices can also be some of the wittiest and the freshest.
