Customer Reviews

This is Our Youth

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A powerful exploration of lost youth during the Reagan Era. Lonergan has a gift for creating real dialogue and characters. Dennis, Warren and Jessica are all like people I have met. As someone who came of age during the same era, I can attest to the authencity of this work.

I also recommend "The Waverly Gallery" and the film, "You Can Count On Me", recently released in the US for further evidence of Lonergan's talents.

Lonergan's debut play, "This Is Our Youth" is an excellent exploration of the battles of (of course) youth, and, more specifically, the warzone that is male friendship.

The play is set in the early 1980's, but the relationships between the three young characters here exist now just as they did then.

This is, foremost, a relationship play. The plot itself is minimal and unimportant. What is important is how Dennis, Warren, and Jessica interact with each other. Lonergan demonstrates himself to be a wonderful observer as the interactions of each relationship in the play (Dennis/Warren, Warren/Jessica, Dennis/Jessica, Dennis/Various People on the Phone) are finely tuned and extremely truthful.

Lonergan's dialogue is masterful. He knows his characters, he knows people like them, and he knows the world that they live in. These are kids, smart kids full of youthful energy and mistakes, who communicate with each other with such. Many young men when reading this piece will find that they've had many conversations exactly like the kind that Dennis and Warren engage in.

I've heard the play being described as 'edgy' and I don't agree with that description. While the play does feature slight drug use and many drug references, this is about the only way that 'edgy' comes into play. The play is at its core a small, finely observed, well-written character piece that is interested in breaking down what makes male interaction tick.

A fine play.

In "This is Our Youth" Kenneth Lonergan portrays three strikingly different characters, Dennis, Warren and Jessica, growing up in Manhattan in the 1980's. Each is faced with different problems of the "Me" generation and struggles to justify his anger at the world in a time when there is nothing to rebel against. When Warren steals money from his father, the three teens are forced to step outside themselves for a night and face reality and one another. It is a moving and funny portrait, and one that anyone who has ever been a teenager can relate to. There is nothing stilted or unnatural in Lonergan's work, it flows easily and touches those who have experienced the turmoil of feeling lost and empty in a world filled with material things.

This is an amazing play, very moving. It captures the bizarre in the ordinary: the lives of three teenagers growing up in a troubled era and looking for ways to be different and stand for something, when there is nothing to rebel against. Wonderful characters, ideas, and dialogue. Beautiful in its simplicity and painful in its candour.

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Young actors, college, high school, young adults, get this play. Lonergan has delivered a powerful, raw, painful, poignant portrait of these "kids". Excellent scene material. Powerful monogues. An incredible piece, with this amazingly raw and frighteningly natural language.