Reaction Review of the Play “this Is Our Youth”

Theatre100

Professor Terry Silver-Alford;

Yangjingjie Su

Reaction Review of the Play “This is Our Youth” 

     In 1993, the Met in New York City produced Kenneth Lonergan's one-act play "Betrayal by Everyone" during their festival of short plays. Lonergan then expanded the play and renamed it This Is Our Youth.

Originally produced by The New Group, the play opened Off-Broadway at the Intar Theatre and was performed by two famous actors Cera and Culkin in order to stage a revival in New York during 2010 in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Lonergan's This is Our Youth made me sympathize with the notion that young generation especially the ones live on a transfer stage to adults. There is high possibility they get to lost themselves and lost their value. Lonergan use the lively sense to warn people. In This is Our Youth, the acting by the friends on the open, exposed stage displayed a gangrene and passive social truth.

      The author- Kenneth Lonergan was born in the Bronx, New York City, New York. His mother is Jewish and his father is of Irish descent. His parents are metal doctors. Lonergan began writing in high school at the Walden School which already went out of business. He also wrote other famous: You Can Count On Me (2000) and Lobby Hero (2001).

I attend the play This is Our Youth on November 10 2016, which was performed at The Clarence Brown Theatre at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States. From the pamphlet, This is Our Youth is one of Kenneth Lonergan’s famous plays. And it was directed by Conner Wilson who is a Chicago based Director and The Artistic Director of the Commission Theatre Co. He has studied directing Shakespeare at the Great River Shakespeare Festival under Paul Barnes and Jim Edmondson. This is Our Youth is a very good play no matter the costume design nor the scenery sets and the acting of actors. The costume and scenery design is a perfectly and professionally sign of the time background which happened in early 19th century. Besides, the acting of characters also represents the features of people at that time.

  The costume design is very professional matched with the time background – 19th century. Warren wears a t-shirt with a short blouse, a tint close-fitting pants and a pair of sneakers. Dennis wears a short sleeve and wide leg jeans. At the begging, he did not wear his sneakers but his white socks with a broken hole, which shows he is a lazy and moneyless man. These two boys represent the low and working-class in that period. However, Jessica’s outlook is more controversial because the ideology of feminist arisen in early nineteenth century. Woman do not wear the heavy and complicated dress but dressed in a dress with jacket. Jessica wears a red cotton dress with jean jacket and a pair of high-heeled shoes, which shows she is a fashionable girl.