Theatre in Review: All the Fine Boys (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)

	Abigail Breslin, Joe Tippett. Photo: Monique Carboni

Two middle-school teens experience markedly different sexual awakenings, with radically different consequences, in Erica Schmidt's new play. Jenny and Emily are best friends who, during weekend sleepovers, stay up late, devouring one grisly horror film after another and discussing boys. (The time is the late 1980s.) Pert, pretty, and shy, Emily is new in town -- somewhere in suburban South Carolina -- and has trouble fitting in. Actually, that's putting it mildly: A group of boys have repeatedly covered her family's house in toilet paper, writing "slut" in shaving cream in her driveway. Jenny is -- on the surface, anyway -- a big bubble of fun, the sort of girl who doesn't see the point of having to grow up as long as she can go to parties and live on a diet consisting almost entirely of pizza, Pringle's chips, licorice, and Skittles. She is prone to moments of teen angst, however: "This morning I looked in the mirror and thought, This is it. It's never going to get better than this," she says, not yet fifteen and already on the downhill slope.

Emily has a major crush on Adam, a senior at the local high school; as far as she is concerned, he is everything a girl could wish for: He edits the school literary magazine, loves high-concept rock acts like The Smiths, and enjoys letting drop bits of information about that time he was institutionalized for a couple of weeks. Jenny begins seeing Joseph, a parishioner at her family's church; he comes across as very gentlemanly, even worrying that she doesn't take communion at Sunday mass. He is, he says, a nuclear engineer and a champion skeet shooter. So what if, at twenty-eight, he is exactly twice her age?

Neither young lady has chosen well. Adam, for all his surface charm -- which he certainly knows how to apply -- is a high-school poseur of the first order, the sort of teen pseudo-intellectual who has an epiphany every hour on the hour. "That's my suburban malaise talking," he says at one point, by way explaining a bitter remark. When mentioning an incident that occurred at the local nuclear plant, he strikes an attitude of wrenching pain and shouts, "God damn the leak!" It's a perfect piece of Kabuki theatre. He is also fond of talking about his latest bed partners in front of Emily, if only to gauge her reaction. Adam is also a master at withholding information as a way of keeping Emily on the hook. Her puppy-like adoration of this Future Loser of America is painful to see.

Meanwhile, Jenny, on her first date with Joseph, coyly says, "I think I know what's going to happen with us." And, pretty soon, it does; in the play's most remarkable scene, he coaxes her into having sex with him. He strips down to his underwear; she sits on the couch nervously nibbling on a slice of pizza. He positions himself on top of her, draws her attention away from food, and, with hand on her neck, slowly grinds away until he reaches an orgasm; throughout the scene, she looks away, her eyes focused on the middle distance. After it is over, Jenny, bewildered, asks, "That's really it?"

Schmidt keeps both plotlines moving in tandem, but this parallel structure results in a distinctly unbalanced drama. The Emily-Adam romance is intimate, closely observed, the stuff of a good short story. Adam simply isn't worth Emily's time and trouble, a fact that breaks out into the open on his birthday, when she offers herself to him and he makes a shockingly honest decision. At the same time, the Jenny-Joseph storyline careens out of control, into breathless melodrama. As she cuts class day after day, vamping him into buying her clothes and makeup, it becomes obvious that something's got to give.

Strains begin to show: Joseph is shocked by Jenny's smoking and swearing and refuses to be seen with her in public. You may not be surprised to hear that he isn't being entirely honest with her, but when her demands become too great, the ugly truth comes tumbling out, it's as hard to swallow as a whole bag of Skittles. (At last, we understand why Joseph so insistently keeps Jenny in the living room of his house, if you can believe he succeeds at doing so.) One narrative feels honest; the other is hopelessly overwrought.

Nevertheless, all four cast members, under Schmidt's direction, expertly bring to life these two ill-fated courtships. With her light blonde, straight hair, sandpaper voice, and penchant for striking sassy attitudes, Abigail Breslin's Jenny is a perfect would-be Lolita, the sort of girl who sees a much-older boyfriend as a cool accoutrement without considering where their relationship is headed. Lying on the couch post-coitus, she looks so fragile you fear she might break; she's also capable of administering a blackmail threat without a second thought. In contrast, Isabelle Furhman's Emily is a mass of free-floating love, desperately in search of an attachment; she is especially fine when, late in the play, she and Adam meet up again after a year apart, only to discover that both of them have changed radically. Joe Tippett's Joseph is initially loaded with clean-cut qualities, which slowly fall away to reveal a very sick man. ("I was good to you!" he screams at Jenny, neatly sidestepping the issue of statutory rape.) Alex Wolff's Adam is just sweet enough for us to accept that Emily would fall for him, while never losing sight of his essential narcissism.

Amy Rubin has supplied a barely furnished living room set -- there's a couch, a table, and a television -- with the floor and walls covered with the same rug material. It's her way of allowing all the scenes, which take place in various locations, to unfold in the same space, but it doesn't at all evoke the play's locale or time frame. Jeff Croiter's lighting, Tom Broecker's costumes, and Bart Fasbender's sound design are all solid.

The most interesting thing about All the Fine Boys is that neither Jenny nor Emily is a victim, although things go very badly for at least one of them; each learns to view the object of her affection with a critical eye. Still, it often feels like two plays stitched together, with results that sometimes are as awkward as Jenny and Emily's attempts at finding themselves. -- David Barbour