Have you eavesdropped on the conversation of a high school girl lately? I have. And let me tell you, the content of these chats will make your head spin.
So, when playwright Tim Venable stages a pivot in the open of “Adolescent Salvation” from three teens at a sleepover silently scrolling social media, to one complaining about boredom, to another casually telling a friend to kill herself in response — he totally captures the essence of present day teens. It’s morbid. And unsettling. But it’s real.
“Adolescent Salvation” is making its Chicago premiere at Theater Wit. The production, which started in Los Angeles, makes its way to the Midwest along with the original director, Guillermo Cienfuegos. Venable and Cienfuegos have found the sweet spot of capturing the full Gen Z aesthetic without falling into the trap of cringy generalizations or the overuse of internet slang.
The production will still be a bit jarring for those unfamiliar with the lives of present day teens. While the time period is the now, the overall feel harkens back to sex, drugs and rock-and-roll (or in this case, Taylor Swift).
The audience is immediately transported into the world of 15-year-old loner Natasha (Piper Jean Bailey) through excellent stage design by Jonathan Berg-Einhorn. The audience enters the theater through Natasha’s closet, literally walking through her hanging garments to get to seats.
It feels like a portal that transports you directly into an adolescent bedroom. There’s no separation between Natasha’s space and the audience. The theater is immersed in her room, with seating replacing each wall. There are moments in the production where characters are face-to-face with audience members as they deliver lines from Natasha’s desk. This creates the feeling that we are all in the action, of which this production has plenty, and this stage design makes the disquieting scenes feel inescapable. It’s clever and makes the set a key component to the success of the production.
This is a dark comedy, with emphasis on the dark. I don’t want to spoil a major plot point, but when this play takes a turn from mean-spirited sleepover to OMG what the hell is going on — the only comparison I can give (without spoiling) is when the incest is revealed in Sam Sheppard’s “Fool for Love.”
The brilliance of this production lives in how much, at times, I hated watching it. And not like a car-crash can’t look away, but deep uncomfortability. I kept wondering how far this team of actors could take it (and it goes farther than I would have liked). Yet, it is well deserving of a positive review because the production pulls this off effectively. My personal difficulty is how to properly explain all of this without spoiling a plot point the production clearly wants to keep. The producers even go so far as not mentioning one of the characters in any of the promotional materials, including web and playbill.
Here is what I can say. Bailey is captivating as Natasha, the teen whose family life is blown up after her father had an affair and ran off with another woman. In the opening scenes, it’s immediately clear Bailey is playing a role that is younger than she is, and her tone of voice while conveying youthfulness is a little distracting. Later, after the reveal, it becomes appreciated.
Natasha is joined in her sleepover by Taylor (Jordan Levene), whose mother is at Margaritaville with Natasha’s mom, and Taylor’s best friend, also named Taylor (Brandon Acosta) who tags along. They are teens, so of course they steal booze from Natasha’s mom, smoke weed and talk about crushes.
This play has a ton of turns and surprises. One of my favorites is the arc of Leven’s Taylor. Early, she’s pegged as a Regina George-style mean girl, but by the end her use of ferociousness transforms from sharp verbal jabs and coercion to friendship and an act of valiance.
Thematically, the play takes a shift in the third act that teeters slapstick. It’s awkwardly sandwiched between teens trying to solve an unsolvable problem and a solemn (and perhaps unnecessary) moment between a drunk mother and her curious daughter. It shouldn’t work, but in the context of the presented circumstances, it serves as a well-received palate cleanser.
It also ties this production together. This play is messy. It captures teenage angst while ratcheting the stakes to levels unimaginable to most viewers. Then, the first act villain becomes a hero and the shy and reserved girl discovers her power while utilizing tequila the way Popeye uses spinach. The ups and downs and changes in tone feel genuinely reflective of what it feels like to be a teenage girl: scary.