My overall impression
Midway through this show, I was a bit upset, under the assumption that I knew where it was going, and it wasn’t a direction I cared for. Making that assumption was a mistake, on my part, as the messages of the play and the tendencies of the characters in it are blurrier than I had assumed, and while I worried it might try to tackle this issue with simplistic moralism and a clear-cut resolution in a situation where there clearly is none, it proved to be an even more impressive piece of art than I had hoped initially.
The performances are strong, with several performers I hadn’t previously seen delivering strong performances, in roles that could potentially be very taxing as the shifts in the show between the silly fun of LARPing and the heavy drama leading up to the inevitable conclusion demand massive shifts in the pitch of all of the characters.
While there were a few choices I didn’t entirely agree with, (the final scene happening on stage, in slow motion, with sounds cues for gunshots took me out of the moment in a big way, and some of the beats shifted into melodrama in a way that seemed more “adults viewing what it’s like to be a teenager” than the very real, simple torture and anguish that a teenager is capable of feeling over the things that now seem so trivial to adults) the play itself provides a lot to think about, and to discuss afterwards, which is ultimately the test of a worthwhile piece of art.
