Kenneth Lonergan’s play This Is Our Youth had its premiere off-Broadway in 1996 at the Intar Theatre. In 2014, the play opened on Broadway and was nominated for Best Revival of a Play. In the continuing Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows, a live reading of Lonergan’s play will take place tonight at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT.
Starring in this reading are Lucas Hedges, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance in Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea; Paul Mescal, who received an Emmy nomination this year for his work on Hulu’s Normal People; and Grace Van Patten (The Meyerowitz Stories, Under the Silver Lake). Lila Neugebauer, who directed Lonergan’s The Waverly People on Broadway, directs.
This Is Our Youth takes place over forty-eight hours in New York in 1982. The three characters are facing real-world challenges in their young lives. Warren has run off with $15,000 stolen from his father, a famous artist. Dennis is Warren’s friend who, as a drug-dealer, thinks he has good ideas on how to spend that money. Jessica is the object of Warren’s desires and proves to be both a keen observer and very nervous at the same time about what’s going on. How, or if, they can navigate their present situation is explored.
Peter Marks, writing for the New York Times, said of the play when it opened off-Broadway, “The world Mr. Lonergan explores is the desolate, dead-end universe of young Manhattanites with rich parents and no direction. They are at that peculiar moment of life, their late teens and early 20’s, when dissoluteness has not yet calcified into hopelessness, when a lack of purpose and a predilection for the quick fix might still, from the most optimistic perspective, be interpreted as a phase.”
Spotlight on Plays serves as a fundraiser for The Actors Fund. Tickets for This Is Our Youth are only $5 and allow you to view the reading anytime between tonight’s premiere and October 24th at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT. Tickets can be purchased here.