Comment on this story What: subUrbia by Eric Bogosian When: Thursday, April 1, 8 p.m. Where: Clarence Brown Lab Theatre Cost: $5 general, $3 students

Evoking the high school hi-jinks of subUrbia

by Paige M. Travis

In an inspiring example of that old theater gem “the show must go on,” All Campus Theater overcame the last-minute hospitalization of pivotal actor Mike Folks on opening night of subUrbia by throwing director Travis Flatt onstage with the script in hand. Dressed like a mid-‘90s slacker in T-shirt and jeans with a knit cap pulled over his head, Flatt improvised his script as a notebook of scribblings appropriate to his character’s endless existential musings. Jeff is the philosopher among his group, but he doesn’t come up with any answers to the numerous questions produced by his ranting. Playwright Eric Bogosian doesn’t offer many answers himself.

SubUrbia is about a group of high school friends stuck in the limbo between graduation and The Rest of Their Lives. Their hometown of Burnfield is the basic drab suburb where the only place to hang out all night is the parking lot of the 7-eleven. While Jeff struggles with his existential doubts about the future, his girlfriend Sooze (Sarah Waugh) itches to move to New York City for art school. Their wild buddy Buff (R.C. Croy) seems happy enough to let others speculate while he drinks, smokes pot and has sex—or just fantasizes about excessive amounts of all three. Their eldest friend is Tim (Peter Hazel) who, after a stint in the Air Force, is a bitter, racist alcoholic who has a slur and an insult for every occasion. “I’m striking a balance between Nietzsche and Bukowski,” he sneers. He’s a truly nasty person.

In contrast, Bee-Bee (Amanda Smith) is harmless, nearly invisible. She’s an enthusiastic advocate of Sooze’s feminist performance art, and she has a shy crush on Buff. She’s sweet, but she’s no less of a do-nothing in Bogosian’s eyes.

If these kids are on trial for being slackers, failures and unproductive members of society, their judge is Norman Chaudry (Justin Rubenstein), the Pakistani owner of the 7-eleven. He is an immigrant by way of London where “the blacks” burned down his store and forced him to leave. Now getting his engineering degree at the local college, Chaudry is living the American dream that these American kids feel little or no ambition to pursue.

What shakes the scene up—and furthers Jeff’s questioning of his purpose—is the arrival of a high school acquaintance who escaped Burnfield and became successful. Pony (Blan Clark Williams) played folk guitar at the prom and went on to become a famous touring musician with a video on MTV. The guys make fun of him—clearly a defensive measure—but the girls are impressed. Returned to do a hometown show, Pony is surprisingly humble. After the gloss and glamour of Los Angeles, he’s nostalgic for Burnfield. “You guys are real,” he enthuses, claiming he has “that old mall feeling...safety and security.”

But even as Pony and Sooze connect over their similar desires of artistic expression, the tone of the play doesn’t ever quite forgive these young people their lifestyle. Bogosian lets them speak their minds—Jeff fights his intellectual awareness, and Tim spouts bigoted rhetoric—but he doesn’t present any excuses or explanations for this aimless, nonproductive youth culture.

Maybe that attitude is to Bogosian’s credit. He wrote the play in 1995, and the production reflects the fashion and music of the grunge-era. But take away the rock T-shirts and the Soundgarden references, and these could be any kids in their late-teens of pretty much any modern generation. If Bogosian flayed this generation for its laziness and apathy, well, the result wouldn’t appeal to the very audience it seeks.

Richard Linklater directed a film version of subUrbia in 1996. The maker of Slacker and Dazed and Confused has a soft spot for adolescent confusion. Dazed is a love note to a late-‘70s summer in suburban Texas complete with fond portrayals of pot-smoking quarterbacks and the lovable older guy who never left town, works for the city and still hangs out with high schoolers. Where the ACT cast endeavors to bring humanity to these people, Bogosian’s script hasn’t quite managed. Tim—Burnfield’s version of the older loser— isn’t an adorable role model; he’s what these kids run the risk of becoming: cynical, angry and impotent. If subUrbia is a fairytale for modern youth, Bogosian gives them a few unpleasant options, one of which is death.

Flatt’s cast members worked with the director-turned-actor, helping him keep up with his lines when his notebook became displaced by a drunken brawl or he lost his place on the page. Together they kept an active pace of rapid-fire dialogue; the question loomed large and obvious of subUrbia’s proximity to Kevin Smith’s Clerks. (Clerks came out a year earlier.) But at some point in the second act I was struck by the nihilism of it all, that these kids—regardless of their potential or promise—aren’t going anywhere or doing anything. Bogosian’s approach to these characters doesn’t offer any hope for their future. Tim’s cynicism and hatred is exhausting, and when it’s possible that he’s killed Pony’s publicist, the truth doesn’t even matter. SubUrbia is a place where motivation is stunted and the meaning of life is only something pondered over a box of Oreos.

In the tradition of ACT productions, the actors are a solid bunch with a few rough edges. Mike Folks is a great actor with big shoes to fill, but Flatt does a good job evoking Jeff’s conflicting emotions—he’s smart enough to worry about his purpose on the Earth, but he also resents feeling like he should live up to society’s expectations. Waugh moves easily in her own skin, a skill that other, more seasoned actors haven’t perfected. Croy’s Buff is a pure hedonist, a fool who laughs at his own jokes. Because he doesn’t shy away from the play’s most profane bits of humor, we are given a no-holds-barred view of this crass guy. Croy and the others give some humanity to characters that could remain flat stereotypes.

Justin Rubenstein isn’t Pakistani, but with his thick dark hair parted flat across his head and his acutely precise posture, he evokes Norman Chaudry’s ethnicity without succumbing to a racial mimicry that would be discomforting to watch. He even manages an accent that, combined with the actor’s confident physical bearing, never strays into potentially offensive territory.

“You throw it all away,” Chaudry yells to the crying young man and dead young girl that litter his parking lot along with so many empty beer cans and cigarette stubs. Yeah, subUrbia doesn’t have a happy ending, but there is something redeeming in its example. ACT is a group of talented young people, and it’s a pleasure to watch them pursuing theater as a means of artistic expression. But Jeff and his Burnfield buddies are a dreary group, a reflection of a certain segment of youth culture and a cautionary tale. Parents, take your teens. Hanging out in parking lots won’t seem so cool.

April 1, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 14 © 2004 Metro Pulse