This Is Our Youth Book

Once upon a time, I was the president of my college theater group and I can't say how many times this play came up as an option to be produced. I never read the play - I heard the plot synopsis and I was sold on the spot - slacker youths, drugs and sex, lots of cursing, and that it had somehow stood out as the quintessential play in the genre. For all those same reasons, my fellow board members routinely voted it down... not that we always did such clean, happy shows, but I'm just saying that my cries to do Bogosian's "SubUrbia" fell on similarly deaf ears.

Anyway, after years and years I thought I might actually like to read the play and see what we'd missed out on. I picked it up while bored in a bookstore in Harvard Square over the winter and read through most of Act One in the fifteen minutes or so I had to kill. I'd recently gone to see "Things We Want" by The New Group and, while I enjoyed parts of the show quite a bit (Dinklage and Hamilton... but I'll get to Hamilton) I kept thinking - "This just isn't 'This is Our Youth' but I know it wants to be." That's when it hit me that I had never actually read the play I was saying it was inferior to.

So, now that I have, I can say that my earlier, baseless statements were right. The play is quite a lot of fun and almost exactly what I had envisioned during the years it lived in my imagination as just a concept. It's witty, rough, irreverent, and hypnotic, despite very little actually going on. There's a vague plot surrounding some stolen money, without which, I suppose, there's not much action... but predictably that doesn't really come to much in the end - aside from giving the boys the means to get some drugs. No, the main thrill of the play is watching the interaction between Dennis and Warren, our two slacker-heroes. Dennis is the clear master in the relationship at first - he bosses lovably meek Warren around, which only leads Warren to further idol-worship Dennis. The real plot of the play is not some stuff about drugs and cash, but about watching Warren break free of Dennis's control and step into his own for the first time. It's a powerful, moving little progression - you cannot help but be similarly drawn to the magnanimity that is Dennis - he's fast-talking, quick witted, hopelessly manipulative, and fascinating. It was no surprise to me to finally notice at the end of my read that the part was originated by none other than Josh Hamilton - without prompting, I'd been picturing him all along - in part because of his somewhat similar role in Things We Want. Warren is a much more interesting version of the character played by Paul Dano in Things We Want - and originally was played by Mark Ruffalo, which was surprising and yet seems perfect. I'd been somewhat imagining a meek, Dead -Poets-Society-era Ethan Hawke (who directed Things We Want!).

At any rate, I am now sad that I'll probably never get to see Hamilton in the role (he's still damn good, but not quite 25 anymore). And I'm doubly sad that we never got to put up the show when I was in college. Perhaps someday, somewhere, I'll stumble onto a little college production somewhere and finally get to see it staged. Until then, I guess I'm just glad I actually know what I'm talking about when I say things aren't as good as This Is Our Youth.