Speech & Debate
Apr. 5th, 2009 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast Sunday I went to a matinee of Speech & Debate (Stephen Karam) at the Lyric Stage. I hadn't been in that space before; it's a nice, small theater, on the second floor of the Y. Much more up-to-date than the Y theater in Central Square, with lots of lighting, reasonably comfortable seating, all the mod cons. It's small enough that there aren't really any bad seats;with the thrust stage, the only thing that was distracting sitting off to one side was when one door of the set wasn't quite closed, giving me momentary glances into the green room. (It was still early in the run; I assume that will have changed by now.)
The show was a lot of fun. It's about three high school misfits in somewhat conservative Salem, OR, who form a debate club. Except that really, only one of them is interested in debate at all, and that's only because she's been denied the role she wants in the school play. The two guys she gets to join to make the quorum for school funding end up agreeing only because of certain leverage she finds out about each of them, which she shares, and one of them finds out her secret, so they end up in a round robin of emotional blackmail. The other side of the plot is about teen sexuality, gay or straight, and adults who may take advantage of teens. The new-in-town guy who hates being in a smaller town is out, and almost trysted with an older guy he didn't know was a teacher; The nerdy investigative reporter keeps trying to get stories in the school paper the advisor won't run, whether on abortion or teachers taking advantage of kids. And the frustrated actor dishes dirt on her blog/podcasts, but hides her abortion.
The set is a simple one, with chairs and desks wheeled around as necessary in what's mostly a classroom, though sometimes small parts of it become bedrooms as the characters talk on cell phones, or text, or listed to podcasts. There's a screen in one wall of the stage, used to project chat logs 'as they happen', also the names of different speech and debate events during the dark times between scenes.
It's a funny show, even with all the serious topics, and I enjoyed it, though it didn't feel quite as 'finished' when it was done as I would have hoped. One student transformed, and the other two got things they wished for because of a reporter, but there wasn't the same emotional impact to those. Not quite balanced, somehow. Yet still good.
The show was a lot of fun. It's about three high school misfits in somewhat conservative Salem, OR, who form a debate club. Except that really, only one of them is interested in debate at all, and that's only because she's been denied the role she wants in the school play. The two guys she gets to join to make the quorum for school funding end up agreeing only because of certain leverage she finds out about each of them, which she shares, and one of them finds out her secret, so they end up in a round robin of emotional blackmail. The other side of the plot is about teen sexuality, gay or straight, and adults who may take advantage of teens. The new-in-town guy who hates being in a smaller town is out, and almost trysted with an older guy he didn't know was a teacher; The nerdy investigative reporter keeps trying to get stories in the school paper the advisor won't run, whether on abortion or teachers taking advantage of kids. And the frustrated actor dishes dirt on her blog/podcasts, but hides her abortion.
The set is a simple one, with chairs and desks wheeled around as necessary in what's mostly a classroom, though sometimes small parts of it become bedrooms as the characters talk on cell phones, or text, or listed to podcasts. There's a screen in one wall of the stage, used to project chat logs 'as they happen', also the names of different speech and debate events during the dark times between scenes.
It's a funny show, even with all the serious topics, and I enjoyed it, though it didn't feel quite as 'finished' when it was done as I would have hoped. One student transformed, and the other two got things they wished for because of a reporter, but there wasn't the same emotional impact to those. Not quite balanced, somehow. Yet still good.