Review: This Is Our Youth

Drugs and sex, drugs and sex. That's all the older generations think we teenagers are obsessed with these days. Maybe a little music thrown in, but these days seems like the elderly tend to reminisce about their lovely music days and criticize us for letting that fall by the wayside, too.

Well, maybe it's true. Do we ever think about our purpose in life? Do we ever contemplate the bad decisions that we as an age group make that can impact- or end- our lives?

Kenneth Lonergan's dark, occasionally comic "This Is Our Youth" asks these eye-opening questions. True, the mode of the message is a few decades aged, but the themes still seem to ring true these days. Not much really changes as far as human behavior goes, anyway, does it? In the Bentley tonight at 8pm Warren Straub (Jack Coster '13) and Jessica Goldman (Marguerite Imbert '12) argued this point briefly, but didn't seem to come to a definite conclusion. There were few conclusions (or at least few solutions) offered in this work- in their place, there were quite a few heavy questions.

The play was one made up of impasses. Dennis Ziegler (Benjamin Gifford '10) was caught between his desire to avoid his acquaintance's unfortunate fate and his addiction to his ritual modes of existence; Warren struggled with the same cycle of despair, tempered by his romantic failures. "This Is Our Youth" might have been about another time period but it sure didn't seem too far off; life, habit, addiction, love, like, sex... all of these are things we spend our lives concerned with. And what do we get from this life?

Long story short, see the play- and think about the answers for yourself. Be warned, as the sign says outside the Bentley, that there is adult content in the show, and a lot of smoking onstage; but this is college, after all. To be frank, the content is less adult than that of a normal dorm.

Tomorrow, 8pm, last show. It lasts about two hours with a ten-minute intermission and it's worth the time. Two dollars, sponsored by the Theater Department in an SAS slot, directed by Genevieve Adams '11.

Seriously, you know you've always wanted to feel a deep and meaningful connection with the life dilemmas of three people from 1982...