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It’s 1982 in New York City and Dennis Ziegler has somehow convinced his parents that, instead of paying for his college tuition, they should pay for a studio apartment on the Upper West Side. He’s a bicycle courier and occasionally buys and sells drugs, but at 19, he doesn’t know what he wants to be and doesn’t care.
His friend,
Warren, arrives having just been kicked out of home. His father is a lingerie
tycoon, who isn’t exactly a criminal, but works with a lot of them. Warren has
stolen $15,000 from his dad, which – he explains later – he’s taken as payment
for his shitty childhood. The two young guys think about what they might do
with the money. Dennis says he can buy some cocaine, some for their use and
some they can sell for a higher price after cutting it. They’ll make a tidy profit
and, maybe, they can get the original 15k back before Warren’s dad is any the
wiser.
When a
phone call comes to say Dennis’ girlfriend is on her way and she’s bringing
Jessica, a girl Warren is keen on, thoughts turn to a wild night of getting
these girls high and the boys getting laid. Dennis is a fast-talking, fast-thinking
reprobate – deploying all sorts of racism and homophobia and threatening physicality
to keep Warren on edge. Warren is unsure of himself, trying desperately to find
his voice and stand up to his abusive father and his awful friend.
Kenneth Lonergan’s
1996 play about youth adrift in Reagan’s America, pushing back against their
parents’ generation, feels in parts timeless and very much of its time. The
rebelliousness of youth contrasted with the seemingly inevitable shackles of
adulthood is always relevant, but this particular milieu – upper-middle-class
kids wanting to slide through life is harder to empathise with in 2026, when
billionaires control everything and disaffected nepo babies come off as
assholes.
That’s not
to say there’s no depth in Lonergan’s characters. Warren’s sister was murdered
by her boyfriend a decade earlier and that goes a long way to explain the
ructions in his family. Where Dennis is loathsome, Warren is the kind of kid
you hope gets past his past. He becomes much more interesting once Dennis
leaves and Jessica arrives, their tentative flirtation is compelling in a way Dennis’
antagonism isn’t.
Director
Maeve Hook keeps the energy up throughout the show, though some of the chaos overwhelms the text in some scenes. Amir Antoine’s performance as Dennis is
full-throttle, but perhaps too much so. There were some fudged lines on opening
night and I wondered if keeping his energy so high exacerbated some of these
stumbles. It’s a tricky part to get right, though. Lonergan has crafted a
character who we aren’t meant to like; the drive of the story is hoping Warren
can escape his toxic relationships, including his friendship with Dennis.
Lachlan
Herring’s Warren was the right level of shy and edgy; shaken up and ready to
pop. While his nervous energy at the start tells us a lot, Herring is able to show
another side to the character in his scenes with Emily O’Brien as Jessica. When
they are on stage, the play is allowed to breathe – and so are we – as they
find their footing and figure out if they really like each other. O’Brien’s
performance is energetic and funny – an oasis in a play that’s otherwise about
toxic masculinity.
For me, the
key to why the play is relevant now: how the manosphere has infected every-day
life. Dennis might just be a rich kid sponging off his parents, but in 2026 he’d
be a podcaster and he’d been broadcasting his invective to a wider audience. Our
concern for Warren is about whether he’ll get sucked into his friend’s view of
the world; and can he make his new relationship work when he’s been told over
and over that women are only good for one thing.
The
character of Dennis is a difficult one to calibrate. The most recent Broadway
production had Kieran Culkin in the role and it seems perfect for his style –
part Roman Roy from Succession, part Benji Kaplan in A Real Pain.
You have to get the audience to somehow enjoy watching the dark places he goes
and the absolute ego maniac he is. In this production at fortyfive downstairs
by Lunatix Theatre, we are put through the wringer, but it’s difficult to
really revel in it.
This is Our Youth is playing at fortyfive downstairs until November 15
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