Senioritis: Devilish High School Chemistry
Local Arts Reviews
Reviewed by Robi Polgar, Fri., Dec. 31, 1999
Senioritis: Devilish High School Chemistry
The Vortex,
through January 1
Running Time: 1 hr, 30 min
All good things must come to an end. Whether or not high school ranks as a good thing, it has provided tasty fodder for gifted writer Rob Nash to create four installments of a wonderful, wild ride for three high school antiheroes: Ben, George, and Johnny, whose fictitious yet very real high school careers Nash has chronicled in his "Holy Cross Quadrilogy." Nash is also a gifted solo performer, taking on all parts in each of the four plays: the boys, their parents, girlfriends, class comrades and bullies, teachers, priests, and outsiders of all sorts. Watching Nash present one of these plays is to see a unique talent at work; he is the most personable of stage performers. At the Vortex, he is right there, almost among the audience, and this proximity seems to allow for a greater sense of intimacy as Nash tells, and acts, his tale. It is impossible not to get caught up in the whirlwind that is a year at Holy Cross High.
Senioritis wraps up the boys' sojourn through and survival of their Catholic high school in Houston, and sends them on their way into a hopeful future, but not before a life-altering escapade in New York, a town that is a must-see for all aspiring writers, as the boys claim to be. The trip to New York is one scene of five, which include some stock moments, hilarious and horrific, from high school life that anyone will find familiar, even though the play is set in the Fifties.
Nash has staged all four parts of the Holy Cross Quadrilogy in different years (Freshman Year Sucks! in 1981, Sophomore Slump in 1992, Junior Blues in 2013, and this installment in 1954). This time, like a curious high school physicist, Nash dabbles with the space/time continuum, ingeniously opening Senioritis at the end of the story, with the boys about to go their separate ways, working backward in time to just before the heroes' first day of senior year. This reversal of time makes the story more and more potent as it unfolds, allowing the audience to see what has led the lads to their fates. Because there are now so many strands of their stories to tie up, the opening farewell scene carries the weight of a play's worth of exposition, which tends to slow the proceedings. But getting over the goodbyes at the outset allows the agile Nash to find greater depth in moments humorous and dramatic.
And there are many, brilliant comic moments: the ROTC Sergeant drilling the fresh recruits, the hapless George among them; Norman Normal's valedictory speech (not to mention his own contribution to that ROTC scene); the telephone conversations between the sequestered, pregnant Jenny and her best friend Maria; Johnny's little chat with Maria's dad on the porch. And there are touching and even frightening moments: Ben's trip out of the closet in this hostile Fifties world, with one brief, heavenly interlude in New York; Mr. Daly's pride at the hapless George; George offering some heartfelt, secretive wisdom to his illegitimate son; Johnny's quest for a life's mission. Nash peppers the play with quiet tender moments that allude to the continuing journey of his protagonists, interspersing these moments with some wacky, boisterous good fun -- bawdy, smart, insensitive, and puerile: the perfect high school mix.
Nash the performer is a devilish high school chemist: playing with a variety of simple solutions that, when combined, foam and pop and change colors forming more complicated compounds. With a shift of the voice, a twist of his body, Nash creates full, detailed characters, one after the other, often in the rapid banter of high school students who exist (only) in the midst of personal crises and turmoil. He's spent the better part of four years honing these quick-change characterizations, and his switches from character to character are a crucial part of the show's humor -- even when the characters are silent, as in a hilarious episode when Ben attempts to confess to a Spanish-speaking priest.
An off-Broadway production is in the works for Nash and his busload of characters. Recall those high school high jinks from the safety of the present, before Nash heads off to New York to find his own fame and fortune.
