I have never been a fan of high school-themed plays and movies since I find many of them to be shallow and corny, very 80s Breakfast Club (and I do find it remarkably difficult to remember my own high school life since it took place so many eons ago way before the toilet plunger was even invented…or so it seems). Yes, I am one of the, oh I don’t know, three people in Chicago, who found the House Theater’s acclaimed and multi-awarded drama The Sparrow, boring, derivative, and unbelievably mushy. So it’s sort of ironic for me to be coming out and saying that the freshest, most original, most deserving of repeated viewings and an extended engagement among all the shows currently onstage right now in the city is a play about high school students. Stephen Karam’s Speech and Debate, fresh from its much-raved about and much-extended off-Broadway run at the Roundabout Theatre Underground series, is being given a fantastic, over-the-top, belly-achingly funny production at the revitalized American Theatre Company (ATC) by new Artistic Director PJ Paparelli (just to duly note, this is the first production outside of New York for the play). Everyone who loves great, insightful, witty new plays should put on their flipflops pronto and rush over to the corner of Lincoln and Byron- there’s so much more terrific, focused, memorable writing in Speech and Debate than in many of Sarah Ruhl’s recent plays (more on that in another blog post).
May 14
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