Theater Wit’s “Adolescent Salvation,” with Piper Jean Bailey, Brandon Joseph Acosta and Jordan Levene/Photo: Boris Martin
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In a post-“Euphoria” landscape, any adult writing about teens has to take pains to present their characters credibly. Los Angeles playwright Tim Venable’s “Adolescent Salvation” is a high water mark in this respect, loaded with fleshed-out characters and shocking surprises. Theater Wit’s Chicago premiere production, directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, is electrifying theater anchored by a virtuosic cast.
“Adolescent Salvation” starts as a regular night in the suburbs, with three teens parallel playing and watching TikToks at rise. These teens aren’t really friends, though. Well, Taylor and Taylor are, but they don’t really know Natasha, their host for the evening. The only reason they’re chilling is because Taylor (girl Taylor) and Natasha’s moms are drinking buddies and, as Natasha tells it, “your mom told my mom that she didn’t trust you” enough to stay home alone. And that’s probably for the best.
Taylor is an acerbic teen with a deep well of rage that she doesn’t know where to direct, not to be left to her own devices. Her “gay emotional support animal” Taylor is her yes-man, “cringe but free” in his own words, awkwardly abiding his bestie’s caprices. Natasha is the total opposite, a soft-spoken artistic type who worships Patti Smith (the play’s title references a passage in Smith’s 2010 memoir “Just Kids”) who harbors notions of being a writer.
“Adolescent Salvation” hums along as your standard teen comedy until a bottle of Natasha’s mom’s tequila comes out, ushering the play into a starkly different mode. Even with these tonal shifts, Venable’s script remains deeply funny, a black comedy that carries the Zoomer screwball language from the play’s opening through the entire piece. I wouldn’t dare tell you what happens, but I will say that “Adolescent Salvation” morphs into a withering chamber piece about the fucked-up choices of adults come to bear cruelly down on children.
Theater Wit’s “Adolescent Salvation,” with Piper Jean Bailey/Photo: Boris Martin
Cienfuegos, who also directed the play’s premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles, draws complex, layered performances out of the young ensemble. Jordan Levene renders Taylor (F) as a furious young woman with a sense of justice and moral outrage as sharp as her tongue. It takes strength to be gentle and kind, and Levene beautifully portrays the contradictions of a righteous person who finds it easier to be cruel.
As Taylor (M), Brandon Acosta delivers an excellent monologue about loving his family fiercely despite their bigotry. He (and Venable) have a crystal-clear sense of compassion for the broken people of this play’s world. As Victoria, Natasha’s ex-punk rocker single mom, Maura Kidwell brings to life a woman who is still trying to keep the party going long after last call.
But the standout is Piper Jean Bailey as Natasha, a chipper and sensitive “old soul” whose guilelessness is immediately reframed as the play evolves. Bailey has absolute control over her portrayal of this deeply complex character until quite literally the final moment, her face illuminated by the glare of an iPhone screen.
Bailey is brilliant as Natasha, and you get the sense that a different performer might give you a completely different “Adolescent Salvation.” After all, it is quite literally Natasha’s world; we enter Theater Wit’s Theater 3 through her closet and sit on the outskirts of her bedroom. A teenager’s bedroom is indelibly connected to their sense of self, and Jonathan Berg-Einhorn’s meticulously crafted set renders Natasha vividly.
“Adolescent Salvation” is a finely tuned, furious attack on adults too self-involved to protect their children while also meditating on the thwarted ambitions of those same adults. “Adolescent Salvation” giddily spins out on these heavy themes, brought to shocking life by Theater Wit’s production.
“Adolescent Salvation” is on stage at Theater Wit, 1229 West Belmont, through October 3.
