“Boys, ” says a prep school coach to a mother visiting his office, “you’re smelling boys.” I’m a big fan of that gamey scent, but I kind of hate it, too. Too many guys jostling together in a room and things can get ugly quick. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s new play (in a world premiere at Steppenwolf) pulls back the crested blazer of male teenage privilege to reveal—well, to reveal what, exactly? The story takes place at a high school for the rich and well-connected, where a football star with early acceptance to Dartmouth—a charmed kid, really (played by Stephen Louis Grush)—is also probably, maybe, possibly the same faceless guy starring in sexually graphic videotape that somehow landed in the coach’s VCR. It seems the girl in the footage was unaware she was being taped. The video was made for a specific purpose and Aguirre-Sacasa spends most of two hours unpacking this mess. But the play is less about a teenage prick (the guy has his reasons, misguided as they are) than it is a story of his mother. She slowly comes to realize —too slowly, your might think with a raised eyebrow—just what sort of man she has married, and the train-wreck influence this has had on her son. Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey gives the role a crisp no-nonsense snap; cool to the touch, but not unapproachable. She is a woman, up until this point, who hasn’t looked very carefully at her life, or the people in it. “Trust me,” her sister says early on, “your 17-year-old football playing Adonis-like son is having sex.” Turns out, that’s the least of her worries. Under Pam MacKinnon’s direction, the play moves with a sense of purpose—it is completely, fully entertaining—and yet the script fails to unearth much in the thought-provoking department. Todd Rosenthal’s scenic design includes a pair of trophy cases that bookend the stage, soaring up to the sky with no end in sight, and you think, yes, these people are obsessed with the trappings of status. It has warped everything they say or do. The insight pretty much stops there. That said, Aguirre-Sacasa has a nice way with a one-liner. “Say the words ‘circle’ and ‘jerk’ and this becomes the hottest story ever,” a classmate says about a secret meeting of football players. Or later, when asked to describe the mood on campus after all has been exposed: “It’s like ‘A Separate Peace’ meets ‘Dawn of the Dead.’” (Nina Metz)
Domestic Import: A Review of Familiar at Steppenwolf Theatre Star of Broadway and MCU alike, Danai Gurira ("Eclipsed") turns her talents back to playwriting with this portrait of an intergenerational immigrant family negotiating the expectations of tradition and modernity.
