Polaroid Stories

Hyde Park Theatre,

through October 2

In the final scene of this Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre production, the backdrop changes from a wall of black plastic garbage bags to a multi-colored display of dozens of Polaroid portraits. Each image has that rich Polaroid color that dates everything back to some indeterminate time when the world's colors were brighter (the mid-Eighties?). The vintage effect is appropriate given that this play, loosely based upon Ovid's Metamorphoses (tales of Orpheus, Narcissus, Echo, et al), is all about former people. Set in an anonymous, cavernous urban jungle, Naomi Iizuka's Polaroid Stories features a cast of Ovid characters played as street kids, all of whom are shadows of the creatures they once were. They have either fallen -- "I used to be queen of this city" -- or ascended: "I am now a god."

In Ovid, such becomings and unbecomings are the stuff of myth and miracle. Here among the street kids, the frequent fluctuations in self-image are more often due to abuse at home, abuse in relationships, and the hardships of street life. Oh, and drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. So drenched are the characters in various intoxicants that they frequently engage in speedy, abrupt conversations that quickly veer from sweetly romantic to sickly violent. Drugs also give each of the characters an aura of self-delusional importance and an air of unsubstantiable profundity. Even the skankiest liars in the bunch say, as if they have just received a revelation they fully plan to ignore, things like, "If you can't trust, it's like you ain't really lived."

The cast of characters is a motley crew of grubby, safety-pin-clad gutter punks, portrayed by an assembly of charming, talented young actors. One, the raver-esque boy who has glitter for hair (love that glitter!) lives the high life and screws rich older men for the decadent and delicious taste of it. A girl with scars all over her body and flowers in her hair doesn't hurt at all because she has crossed the river of forgetfulness and can't remember how she got all cut up. Across the board, the acting is convincing, as the characters expertly walk that thin line between attractive and icky.

Acclaimed director Vicky Boone in general succeeds in letting the cast's youth and energy run free, but there are a few points at which she might have considered introducing a little restraint. Dominating the middle of the stage is a chain-link fence. Every emotion and activity is projected onto the fence as people climb up, hang from, look through, throw people into, hurl clothes at, and have sex up against it. Kicking the fence in self-loathing and fury is standard practice, and the repetition gets somewhat relentless, as does the repetition in certain dialogue, such as the "ifIhadanickelforeverytime" phrase: "Yeah, this is how it is." But the repetition that is most detrimental to the production is the overuse of the "freak-out." Although presumably all that crack will tend to keep things a little hyper, the endless outbursts and unbridled use of curses minimizes their power. There are only so many times you can watch the common exchange "I love you ... (pause to let girl start to believe she is loved) ... Shut the fuck up, bitch!" without both the love and the expletives ringing false, the meaning behind the words blending into a constant stream of strung-out hysteria.

There are moments, especially when the very excellent glitter boy (Cory Cruser) sings to Echo (Adrienne Dawes) about his beautiful voice, and the expertly swaggering D (Joey Gibson) says things like "Little Brother, I'm a god" that the production seems on the brink of becoming something like the musical Hair. Polaroid Stories is also reminiscent of the Hollywood street kids movie Where the Day Takes You, in which teens opt for life on the street because it's more in their control than life in an unstable family. Here, too, the characters consciously steep themselves in unholy alliances and self-annihilating lives while at the same time both craving and repudiating all offers of love and safety. This renders them tenuously alive, vaguely themselves, and so full of drugs and sadness that they do indeed take on a mythic aspect, groping for some kind of redemption as they remain dimly aware that they are not immortal, but are in fact starkly, painfully human.