THREE MAJOR PLAYS

A collection of two-act plays probes damaged lives.

Sometimes people’s past traumas, even when known and accounted for, can destroy them in the present. In Tattoos, teenager Wylie shocks his ex-military father, Wyman, by joining the Army and proposing to his girlfriend, whom he met only two weeks ago. Not knowing what else to do, Wyman allows the new wife, 16-year-old Julie, to move into the house while Wylie is away at boot camp. It quickly becomes clear that the real romantic tension may be between Wyman and his teenage daughter-in-law—and that Wylie may have engineered it. In School Play, Ted, a middle-aged college English instructor, has some concerns about essay content written by a Kenyan student named Charles. “Most times the kids in my classes write stuff about things like the sports trophies they won as middle schoolers,” Ted tells his superior. “Charles mentions people’s hands getting cut off with machetes.” Despite Ted’s fears, the two enter into an odd sort of mentorship, one that comes to involve an alluring high school–aged actor. Tyrannos is a modern take on Greek tragedy involving a Donald Trump–like American president plagued by scandals—including a potentially career-ending rumor that his wife is actually his sister. Young creates captivating premises, at least in the first two plays, and his dialogue is sharp and engaging. But his characters rarely act or speak in the ways that normal humans would. They are all hyperliterate, whether they should be or not, dropping references to the theater and Freud and asking dramatic questions rather than obvious ones. Here, Wyman and Julie chat after their (illegal) indiscretion: “WYMAN Well, I’m not blaming you...anyway, it wasn’t your whole body.…I mean I think Freud was trying to answer that question: Why do we feel bad? I mean, I don’t feel bad about wanting to play golf, usually. His answer: mum and dad. ‘Our beds are crowded,’ he said. JULIE Did you love her? Wylie’s mom.” The first two plays bring up serious issues—in both cases, the predatory behavior of men, among others—without earnestly addressing them. The third play is tedious Trump-era moralizing. None of the three manage to quite achieve the lofty aims that the author sets for himself.

A trio of intriguing but uneven dramas.