This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan - Steppenwolf Theatre

Steppenwolf bring us this new production of Kenneth Lonergan's 1996 play, set in 1982 New York City. Under the highly skilled direction of Anna D Shapiro, the young but experienced cast of Keiran Culkin, Michael Cera, and Tavi Gevinson bring these arguably troubled young characters to life beautifully. Staged in traverse, the audience have differing perspectives; from my seat I could see into the bathroom, and watch along with Culkin as he saw old TV programs, whereas the other side likely saw beautiful detail I could not. Shapiro's staging had beautiful movement; choreographed, clearly, and yet giving the feeling of being organic - as if we were peering in on this apartment where the walls had somehow fallen down. The detail in the set design supported this, showing a mess of cords behind the hifi, as you would find in most homes.

The play, which could feel dated, does not. These youth, raised to expect everything but living stilted by the weight of this expectation, are not unlike countless you will find today. Lonergan says in the program notes that he doesn't feel different about the play, and I don't think we should either. These are our youth, our future; This Is Our Youth remains an alarming and necessary piece of theatre.

It is interesting to see audiences anticipate their own reception of an actor. Although the play has funny moments in the absurd friendship of these 3, Cera's trademark awkwardness got more laughs than the script might warrant (and than his performance deserved). His performance was at first stilted; the early scenes opposite Culkin felt careful, measured, however he relaxed into the scenes with Gevinson and this is where he began to shine.

Gevinson, known primarily for her fashion blogging, although she's been making forays into acting, was sweet and very believable as Jessica. My only real qualm was her vocal work, which lacked support.

Keiran Culkin's performance, however, was outstanding. He's played the role before (on the West End) and finds beautiful subtlety in the seemingly manic shifts of his character, Dennis. A character which I have seen come across as a cliche rich kid turned bad boy was nuanced and heartfelt.

This production is bound for New York later this year, and I'll be curious to see how it develops for Gevinson and Cera - Culkin at this time is in a league of his own among this cast.

Fefu and her Friends - Sarasvati Productions @ Ralph Connor House

This enjoyable staging of Maria Irene Fornes' feminist classic Fefu and her Friends by director Hope McIntyre was presented promenade style in the historic Ralph Connor House. The audience began together in a basement room, where we were introduced to the characters, after which groups were split up to see 4 scenes occurring simultaneously. Each group saw the scenes in a differing order, which provided a slightly different colour to the remainder of the play. For example, my group saw the more pedestrian "every day" events first, then the stirring bedroom scene with Kelci Stephenson, leaving my impression to feel that this scene was somewhat disjointed from the rest of the play. In contrast, a friend saw that scene first, and then the less ominous scenes, and found that she heard the screams echo through the other scenes to great effect. This is, of course, one of the downfalls of this sort of production, as perspective can play such a crucial role in the experience.

I also found the promenade to be at once enjoyable, but also frustrating - the lovely volunteers who led us from room to room were helpful, however seeing the other groups move through the house all at once took away from the sense of voyeurism that we might have otherwise felt. The beautiful proximity to the characters' personal moments was broken once we began to move to the next space, encountering our fellow audience members eye to eye. I wonder whether cutting to 3 groups might have limited this somewhat and made for a more immersive experience.

These qualms aside, the cast put forward uniformly strong performances, and captured the period and its (still very relevant) ideas beautifully. On the whole it was an enjoyable production, and given audience enthusiasm for it I hope it will open doors to continued experimentation with the audience-actor relationship in Winnipeg theatre circles.