Playwright: Nick Jones
At: Smoke & Mirror Productions at the Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave.
Phone: (773) 409-1000; $15
Runs through: June 22
George is a romantic. He reads Martin Buber and believes that sex should be Something
Special. Jamie is a Goth-rocker in a band called the Bloody Bitches. She grooves on Ludwig
Van and believes sex is the universal solution. Steve, George's best buddy, is an amoral
schadenfreudian whose philosophy is 'women want a cave man.' Jamie's boyfriend, Charles,
is a rationalist who hustles at chess tournaments and philanders with such cool caddishness
that even the promiscuous Steve calls him a scumbag.
Other denizens of this microcosm include David, the sardonic JavaLove baristo, Carol, a
blonde of little brain, and Genevieve, a therapist turned phone-sex gabber. Most of them have
been acquainted since second grade, live amid a welter of educational paperbacks and speak
in the stilted idiom characteristic of loners who converse more with books, song lyrics and
screenplays than with actual people.
Oh, they're cute enough to have their own TV series—Steve's relationship with his parents
could by itself sustain a season, as could the backstory on how the twentysomething David
acquired the capital to start his own business. This makes all the more commendable
playwright Nick Jones' refusal to reduce his characters to media-promulgated stereotypes. I
mean, George is a college-age male and he's still a VIRGIN, for chrissakes! When did you last
see one of THOSE in an artistic economy dominated by demographic appeal? And where most
authors would take the easy Jack-has-his-Jill route in wrapping up his protagonists' fates,
Jones starts his post-adolescent pilgrims on their journey to maturity —George stops recycling
booklore and speaks for himself, Jamie acknowledges her emotional vulnerability—while
leaving enough unanswered questions to pique our curiosity.
The actors—barely older than the characters they play—deliver sensitive performances
devoid of egodefensive swagger. Ron Ward hints at the intelligence simmering beneath
Steve's slackerly stance, and Kerri Van Auken—a Faith-the-Slayer lookalike who swings a
mean shortsword in a Dream Sequence duel—likewise injects poignancy into what could have
been simply another leather-grrrl clone. All unite to make for a sweet, if lightweight, look at
bright kids too unsure of where 'wild' is to go there. You remember THEM, don't you?