Theatre in Review: Initiative (Public Theater)

	Olivia Rose Barresi, Greg Cuellar. Photo: Joan Marcus

I hate to point out the obvious, but an epically scaled play needs ideas of a commensurate size if it is going to succeed. Initiative, by the debuting playwright Else Went, is loaded with ambition, beginning with its large cast of principals and a five-hour running time. A play that takes its characters' problems so seriously that you don't have to, it offers a smorgasbord of adolescent trauma set against a vaguely rendered background of early twenty-first-century politics. It has its moments of insight, and Went shows plenty of promise, but, to my mind, she has chosen the wrong format for her story, and it's a decision that pays diminishing returns.

Initiative -- I assume the title is meant ironically, since the play is an extensive catalog of ambivalence, inaction, and thwarted ambition -- follows a group of teenagers living in a Northern California coastal town in the early twenty-first century. The characters, most of whom are fourteen or younger as the play begins, are played by thirty-ish actors, possibly because it kicks off with a fairly graphically rendered sex act: On an overnight trip to Yosemite National Park, the summer before they enter high school, Riley, using a tentatively coaxing approach, fellates his best friend Lo. A budding baseball star, Lo immediately regrets his moment of pleasure, setting out on a campaign of revenge that includes beating up Riley in the school shower. He also steals away Riley's BFF, Clara, making her his girlfriend. The toxic behavior doesn't stop there: On a date, Lo sexually assaults Clara, sending her into a spiral of anxiety and anorexia; when she confides in Riley, he jealously pushes her away. This is not how freshman year is supposed to go.

Lo, who is the piece's self-destructive villain -- his later activities will include drug-dealing and cheating on a later girlfriend -- has his reasons, living at home with an opioid addicted mother. (His father has fled the coop, preferring to build septic tanks on military bases in the war-torn Middle East; rejections don't come any plainer.) Lo's sweet, but feckless, younger brother, Em, hangs out with the blustery, massively insensitive Tony, and Kendall, who, despite her relative youth, is often the play's voice of reason. When introduced, hanging out at a motel hot tub, she is touting her relationship with an older female artist, but soon she is trying, and failing, to strike a spark with Em, who suffers from a free-floating sadness tied to his unstable, unhappy family situation.

To the extent that Initiative has an organizing principle, it is the Dungeons and Dragons games that consume Em, Tony, and Kendall. They are joined by Clara, who finds a release from her psychological problems in fantasy role-playing, and Riley, a gifted writer, who channels his talent into increasingly convoluted scenarios for them to act out. Unfortunately, these extended sequences are often crushingly dull, adding to the production's extreme length without providing anything meaningful. (One of them, as conceived by Riley, appears to be a healing reprise, with a better ending, of the moment when Lo assaulted Clara, but this doesn't fully justify the time taken.) Then again, repetition is central to the play's methodology: In addition to the D&D sequences, Kendall and Em keep hashing out their nonstarter relationship; Riley endlessly plays Hamlet about pursuing a writing career, arguing with a supportive teacher (on whom he has a crush) about entering various competitions; and Lo spends his school years on one long party jag, boozing, running drugs, and reveling in the big league future that he feels is rightfully his.

The script has many incisive moments, especially when Kendall is holding forth; Went's ear for the way young people talk feels accurate, and she has a solid appreciation of the built-in tumult of adolescence that leads young people to make so many bad decisions. (She also makes good points about the tendency to overmedicate kids rather than to help them face their troubles.) But this grandly scaled piece dwarfs the insights it offers. In prose, the author might make something lyrical and profoundly understanding about the pains of growing up; in a dramatic format, it feels rambling, unfocused, populated by unremarkable characters with unremarkable problems. The first act ends on a distinctly undramatic note, the second act is weighed down by role-playing games, and the third act roams in search of an ending, including a tedious monologue by Riley; a random, life-altering accident; and a graduation speech that struggles to tie everything together. Went also tries to sketch in the global events of the era, among them the destruction of the Twin Towers, war in the Middle East, and a growing awareness of climate destruction, little of which feels organic to what is taking place onstage.

Emma Rosa Went's direction gives plenty of breathing room to each character and plot point, resulting in languorous pacing, but she gets some solid work from a cast of new faces, especially Greg Cuellar as Riley, struggling to build an identity with no adult support, Carson Higgins as Lo, hiding a gnawing pain under a swaggering exterior, and Andrea Lopez Alvarez as Kendall, the wisest person onstage. Olivia Rose Barresi's Clara, who is religious, homeschooled, and much tougher than she initially looks, is also appealing, although she often comes across as disconcertingly middle-aged. Christopher Dylan White has a touching vulnerability as Em, and solid contributions are made by Jamie Sanders, as Tony, the in-house loudmouth who finds himself unexpectedly socially sidelined; Harrison Densmore as Ty, a transfer student who everyone assumes is gay; and Brandon Burk, heard on the sound system as several voices of authority.

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams' scenic concept doesn't really suggest the coastal location -- that falls to sound designer Angela Baughman and projection designer S. Katy Tucker (who also keeps track of the characters' plentiful text messages) -- but she provides a flexible, open space that accommodates the action. Kindall Almond's costumes evoke the period and suit the characters. (The production has a credit I've never seen before, "costume design dramaturg," in this case, Susan Hilferty.) Christopher Akerlind's graceful lighting goes a long way toward aiding the dramatic flow. "I feel locked up, behind myself," Riley says. "I feel like my heart is trapped, behind my ribs, like I need to crack open. Like something needs to happen>." He may not be the only person at the Public who feels that at Initiative. It's a novel aspiring to be a play and, as such, it overstays its welcome, and it arguably cradles its characters too closely, treating them as more special than they are. --David Barbour