No dreams, no hope, no future. Welcome to “subUrbia.” Serendipity weekend gets a cherry on top with the performance of “subUrbia,” which depicts the American dream become a nightmare.
The play insightfully addresses issues of racism, homophobia, ethnocentricism and many others.
“‘subUrbia’ is an intense, edgy and hilarious play with strong social relevance,” said Tim Scales, director and junior.
“subUrbia,” by award-winning writer Eric Bogosian, follows seven twenty-something suburbanites who spend their time hanging out behind the local 7-Eleven for one night of aimless debauchery. Their lazy night is interrupted when Pony, played by sophomore Mike O’Malley, returns to the neighborhood.
Pony was part of the group during their high school years, but he left town to find fame as a rock star. Pony’s return sparks excitement that quickly turns to anger when his success forces his friends to acknowledge their own failings.
The group talks about what they dream they’ll do with their lives. The whole time, however, it sounds like a 5-year old saying he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up or the average liberal arts college student who secretly dreams of being artsy and posh poor.
The characters are filled with aspirations and lack the courage and talent to follow through. For the most part, their struggle is amusing and filled with sarcasm. As the story progresses, the plot hints of the approaching violence.
By the end of the night, after perpetual argument, violence and death, some characters have made it out of town while others are left behind to continue their pathetic suburban lives which are limited to drinking and hanging around on the 7-Eleven corner.
“There’s a lot in the play that is very relevant to what’s going on both around the world and at Guilford,” said first-year Joe Pelcher, who plays Jeff.
“Jeff has yet to do anything with himself after high school,” Pelcher said. “He exists in a bubble of a town, but is aware of the larger world around him and wants to change it, but has no idea how to go about this.”
“I love how it questions people who believe they are liberal and proactive but who are actually mislead and somewhat ignorant about the issues they argue about,” said junior Madeleine Pope, who plays the character of Sooze, the dissatisfied girlfriend of Jeff who aspires to be a performance artist in New York City.
Balanced between comedy and drama is a play designed to make the audience evaluate their own behavior to see if they are full of the idealism that is described by Jeff as “guilty middle-class bulls***.”
“We’re hooked up to our plasma screens, absorbing porno and violence, sucking up high cholesterol and fat, getting larger and larger like Christmas geese, ultimately bursting with cancer and bad karma!” Jeff cries.
One of the best performances in the play is by first-year Bram Crowe-Getty who plays Tim, a bigot and former Air Force pilot. He drinks nearly 24 hours a day and constantly terrorizes two Palestinian 7-Eleven owners, played by first-year John Douglas and sophomore Miranda Fedock.
Crowe-Getty convincingly portrays a violent, apathetic man brimming with bitterness and anger. Even in his first scene, audience members are instantly hit with a vague feeling that they knew people like him in high school and worry if that’s how their acquaintances turned out.
“I think people are going to see themselves and their friends in the show, which is always exciting,” Pope said.
The characters have nothing original or productive to offer the world they live in, and, secretly, they know it.
In one touching scene, Sooze is telling Jeff that she wants to move to New York City. Jeff says, trying to convince her to stay, “Who am I going to hang out with? Who am I going to dream with?”
Sooze responds, “Jeff, you don’t have any dreams.”
“The writing is fantastic. It manages to strike a balance between heartbreakingly pertinent and hilariously funny,” Pope said. “It presents interesting and important ideas to college-age kids about apathy and naivety, and the worst-possible scenario as a result of that type of irresponsibility.”
“It is easy for us to relate to because the characters are, in many ways, reflections of ourselves,” Scales said.
There will be free performances April 7 at 5 p.m. and midnight and April 8 at 5 p.m. The dialog, while dense with social message, is littered with profanity and racist slurs, so sensitive ears beware.