Playwright: Milena Markovic, translated by Dubravka Knezevic
At: The Utopian Theatre Asylum ( T.U.T.A. ) at the Chopin, 1543 W. Division
Phone: 847-217-0691; $22
Runs through: July 8
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
'Children today have bad manners, they flaunt authority and have no respect for their parents or teachers!' grumped Socrates in 399 B.C., a sentiment echoed with persistent regularity by the elders of succeeding generations, all of whom claim the phenomenon as unique to their own culture and history. This view becomes especially prevalent during periods of social and/or economic unrest—consider the German teenagers in Ferdinand Bruckner's 1926 Krankheit Der Jugend ( The Sickness Of Youth ) , their American counterparts in James T. Farrell's 1932 Studs Lonigan, and the lads in Anthony Burgess' 1962 A Clockwork Orange.
So though the dystopia in Milena Markovic's Tracks purports to be Yugoslavia during the upheaval following the death of Tito, the activities of its nihilistic teenagers are not unfamiliar. Muscle boy Nasty urinates on feeble-minded Idiot's bookbag, sensitive Hero affects a veneer of bravado on order to maintain leadership, quiet Cheery keeps to the sidelines where kindness is occasionally allowed, and the lone female consort to this pack of Dead End Kids is called 'Buttonhole.' The adults who serve as their role models are no better.
This isn't West Side Story, however, despite the first scene featuring a finger-snapping nursery-rhyme rap, followed by interruptions to the action while the company takes up musical instruments and warbles nostalgic pop tunes. Markovic's episodic images make reference to inter-ethnic hostilities in the Balkan countries attracting worldwide attention during the 1990s—Hero joins the army and is wounded, Buttonhole is gang-raped by enemy soldiers and Idiot finds a discarded grenade. But these are performed in the deliberately artificial style associated with Brechtian Lehrstücke—Hero crooning Sea Of Love while lying on a battlefield with a bloody belly, for example—resulting in a tone that keeps us always comfortably distanced from any visceral response to the atrocities.
Because as long as they stay far away from our world, we love our bad boys, don't we? Nothing makes for theatrical spectacle like athletic young actors recreating adolescent-male fantasies. Even the opening-night audience, many looking to have personal memories of the events depicted, chuckled indulgently at the antics of these stereotypical rowdies ( who eventually abandon their destructive ways to become responsible citizens, after all ) . But when the entire production works to discourage the emotional investment necessary for us to rejoice in their redemption, why should we care?