Theater Reviews

Oct 9, 2008 - Nevada Rep opens its season outing the sex fantasies of the young and the restless

By Jack Neal

Brodie, Henry, Meredith and Angie, are not exactly Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, unless one remembers the sex fantasies legendary movie director Cecile B. De Mille made out of scripture for a host of box office hits.

Regardless, and ready for their close-ups, it’s out of the closet in a big way for the four characters in Wendy MacLeod’s “Juvenilia.” “Juvenilia” is a play about the sexual mores of the young and the frantic. Its characters, like hormonally fueled 20-year-olds everywhere, are eager to experiment with one another and in all combinations imaginable.

They hypothesize about their experiments beforehand, then analyze them endlessly afterward. As a perceptive teacher once said about rumors denting a young woman’s reputation, “Boys always kiss and tell.”

Each of McLeod’s four characters is glib and intelligent. Each projects a certainty about everything only the limited experience of youth can produce. Beneath the surface, each is unnerved and confused. If it sounds like an interesting scenario for a play, it sometimes is. Unfortunately, the discourse of know-it-all, boozed-up college kids, so interesting to participants, can be pretty dull to outsiders listening in.

The play takes place in a college dormitory room and accompanying hallway on a Friday night. Henry (Kevin Davies) is a sensitive chap with a painfully inhibited sex drive. His buddy, Brodie (Michael Fuller), is the more sexually gifted of the two and someone women can’t resist. Meredith (Julia Pratt) is Brodie’s taken-for-granted girl friend and rich kid who feigns being tough and independent.

The three are bored and decide to entice Angie (Sophia Mesfin), a black, Christian girl, into a three-way with the boys. The fact that Angie is sweet, Christian – and black, gives the playwright (a free-love hippie, perhaps) a chance to bounce comments about race and sex off dormitory walls.

By and large, MacLeod’s 85-minute play doesn’t connect. Not enough character development takes place to make this evening of fun and games plausible. The dialogue has lots of sex talk and wise-guy perkiness of the under-educated young, sans the wit associated with youngspeak.

The four actors are excellent at being the people MacLeod wants them to be - self-absorbed and as annoying as some college kids are. That’s not a put-down. All the performances are solid. Everyone is comfortable on stage.

Director Robert Gander has forged together two challenging evenings of theater of the young (“Juvenilia” alternates with “This Is Our Youth”). Gander keeps his actors moving at a brisk pace. Now in his second year with Nevada Rep, Gander is putting a fresh face on university theater in Reno. It’s nice to see new talents in this Nevada Repertory production. A minor drawback, occasionally on-stage conversations are so intimate they don’t project. Audiences are not irrelevant peeping toms looking in on action from the wrong side of closed windows.

Michael Fernbach’s scenic and lighting designs are, as always, first-rate. Mary Katherine Orr has designed the costumes, and – while they’re not supposed to be glamorous, they work. A cautionary note for actors baring mid-drifts! Bare skin without perfect posture is a risk. “Tummies in” is an old axiom that still works.

“Juvenilia” can be seen Oct. 2, 4, 8 (the performance reviewed), 10 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 12 at 1:30 p.m., at the Redfield Studio Theatre, 1664 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada. For information call 775-784-4278.