Reviews
Talkin' Broadway.com
dark play or stories for boys
I have been waiting for a play to come along that gets the Internet right. I'd almost started to think that it was impossible to properly convey, with human beings on a stage, all of the intricacies of Internet chat - where what people write isn't always what they think, and other people see only a part of the true person behind the words. Enter dark play or stories for boys (no capital letters or punctuation, of course - because that's what chat looks like), Carlos Murillo's play receiving its West Coast premiere at the Theatre@Boston Court. Is there a more perfectly titled theatre for a play about Internet chat?
On an open, largely bare stage, where the only constants are several monitors scrolling text, Adam, an innocent sixteen-year-old, is having an Internet chat with Rachel, an enthusiastic teen who has answered his blogged request for love. Adam sits in his chair, facing the audience, speaking aloud the lines we know he is typing to Rachel, and we see on his face his excitement at Rachel's responses. Rachel, on the other side of the stage, also facing the audience, also speaks her lines with real sweetness and joy. And we see Nick, the precocious fourteen-year-old who has created Rachel in order to fool Adam. Rachel is merely an online persona of Nick's invention. And when Adam asks Rachel a question for which Nick has no easy answer, Rachel turns, questioning, toward Nick - and, in that moment, I want to stand up and applaud, because that's it, that is the weird and complex reality that is behind the pseudo-reality of online chat, and this is a play that finally gets it and puts it on a stage. Much credit to director Michael Michetti for not only conveying it, but for also making it exciting to watch. In this play, Internet chat is actually theatrical.
"Dark play," Nick learns, from a drama teacher, is a game where only some of the people know the rules; the others don't even know they're playing a game. And Nick asks, almost too quickly, if that's like what happens when you lie in a chat room. Nick is smart, perceptive and incredibly manipulative. A quiet loner - we are not surprised to learn he has few friends, nor does his early-play reference to comic book superheroes take us by surprise - Nick sees himself as superior to the people he can't seem to relate to as an equal, so he entertains himself by messing with their heads. As his little dark games start to bore him, he goes for the big score: creating Rachel for Adam to fall in love with.
The play only works if Adam is gullible. I'll say that again: the play only works if Adam is gullible. Knowing this, the script makes a point of, early on, introducing Adam as extremely gullible. Indeed, Nick talks about classifying people by their "gullibility threshold," and notes that Adam is pretty much off the chart. And yet, despite this very obvious establishment of character, we are asked to believe that Adam falls for increasingly ridiculous (and, at one point, absolutely gut-bustingly funny) scenarios that Nick feeds him. It nearly challenges the audience's own gullibility threshold, to be asked to accept that a character could be that astonishingly dim. It helps that actor Adam Haas Hunter does a solid job of putting Adam across, especially when he has instances of momentary doubt but quickly suppresses them because he so passionately wants to believe. It is the script itself which, at times, gives one pause.
Stewart W. Calhoun is exceptional as Nick. The play is told in flashback - the moment in the present (to which Nick keeps returning between scenes) is a rare and painful moment of indecision for Nick. The game player does not know the right move to make, and it's nearly tearing him up. Calhoun brilliantly shows us the interplay between Nick's self-confidence and his self-doubt. And while there's a certain likeable charm to this kid, whose opening line is "I make shit up," there's also an almost emotionally sadistic streak in him, and Calhoun transitions seamlessly into the Nick who crosses lines he really shouldn't cross.
There's great comic work from Johnathan McClain and Bethany Pagliolo in various over-the-top supporting characters - McClain does a hilarious turn as a beggar whose sob story reaches ever more ridiculous heights of improvisation, and Pagliolo's drama teacher who advises her students to seek out "dangerous" theatre is equally memorable.
While dark play or stories for boys isn't entirely dangerous itself, it most definitely is a story of dangerous theatre. It's the story of a kid who plays a dark game and ends up being played by it. It's very nearly Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Internet age. And it works.
dark play or stories for boys runs at the Theatre@Boston Court in Pasadena through November 18, 2007. For information, see www.bostoncourt.com.
The Theatre@Boston Court presents dark play or stories for boys by Carols Murillo. Directed by Michael Michetti. Scenic design Donna Marquet; Video Design Austin Switser; Sound Design Cricket S. Myers; Lighting Design Lap-Chi Chu; Costume Design Rachel Myers; Props Lena Garcia; Assistant Director Jennifer Epps; Associate Producer Brian Polak; Production Stage Manager Rebecca Cohn; Casting Michael Donovan, CSA; Key Art Christopher Komuro; Publicist Aldrich & Associates.
Cast:
Nick - Stewart W. Calhoun
Molly/Rachel - Danielle K. Jones
Male Netizen - Johnathan McClain
Adam - Adam Haas Hunter
Female Netizen - Bethany Pagliolo
A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review
Dark Play or Stories for Boys
By Laura Hitchcock
Dark Play is a kind of game where certain players know the rules and other players don't. -- Mrs. Spiegel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This play's title could do without the last four words, since the games these on-line teen-age boys play could be played by any sex at any age. Developed by playwright Carlos Murillo at the California Santa Barbara Summer Theatre Lab under the supervision of Naomi Iizuka and now running at The Theatre@Boston Court, Dark Playlinks the dangers of internet chat rooms with a sensibility influenced by 14-year-old Nick's theater teacher, Mrs. Spiegel. She tells her class, "The best theater t takes the audience on a journey into the deepest, most dangerous regions of the human soul. At the end of the journey, the audience has faced that darkness, that danger and can see the darkness and danger lurking in their own souls and actively take steps to change it." Nick soon discovers the fallacy in this dogmatic pap when, a new kid in town, he fixates on the World Wide Web as "the one place kids my age and demeanor could escape the cruel and unusual punishments assigned by your peers."
The play begins in Nick's college dorm room when his first girlfriend asks him about the scars on his midriff. "Do I tell her the truth or do I do what I do so well? Make shit up?" he muses. The story he tells the girl takes her into that chat room where his 14-year-old self has become disillusioned with cyber sex and the awesome response to fake seduction ads. When he comes across a naively worded ad from 16-year-old Adam, reading "I want to fall in love", he's blown away. What is this love? He has to find out. He knows Adam won't tell him because Adam is looking for a fantasy girl. So Nick becomes Rachel and Adam does fall in love. What follows is as predictable and tragic as Cyrano de Bergerac and as melodramatic as something you'd expect a 14-year-old comic book junkie to create. On the other hand, he could easily have lived it.
Stewart W. Calhoun makes Nick credibly precocious and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Adam Haas Hunter brings Adam from innocence to corruption with wide-eyed subtlety. They're ably supported by Danielle K. Jones as Rachel/Molly, the fantasy modeled on Nick's real life love or vice versa, and Johnathan McClain and Bethany Pagliolo in a variety of parts. One of my favorites was Pagliolo's cop, Olivia, who, while goading Adam into retribution, corrects his grammar and spelling.
Murillo has an aptitude for skewering today's culture through piercing literate dialogue and credible, sad and questing characters. It's material that brings out the best in Michael Michetti's intuitive direction.
LA Weekly
10/15/07
GO!
DARK PLAY OR STORIES FOR BOYS Playwright Carlos Murillo tells us that his play refers to dangerous games, where some players know they're playing, while others are involved without their knowledge. Fourteen-year-old Nick (Steven W. Calhoun) takes this concept to the Internet. Though he looks innocent and angelic, Nick is a perverse master-manipulator. In a chat room he discovers Adam (Adam Haas Hunter), a straight, naive 16-year old, who announces that he's looking for love, and describes the girl he wants. Nick assumes the identity of the imaginary Rachel (Danielle K. Jones), designed to fit Adam's specifications. Soon Adam is in love with Rachel - but Nick feels left out. He inserts himself into the scenario as Rachel's brother, and manages to meet and seduce the hapless Adam. The game grows crueler, more complex and more perilous, till both boys are entrapped in it. Murillo's play is strange, haunting and clever, and director Michael Michetti gives it a stunning, beautifully acted production. Calhoun and Hunter are terrific, while Jones, Jonathan McClain and Bethany Pagliolo dexterously play all the other figures, real or imaginary, in their lives. Donna Marquet's handsome, severely minimal set is filled with TV screens that reveal Austin Switser's impeccably integrated video designs. THEATER AT BOSTON COURT, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Nov. 18. (626) 683-6883) (Neal Weaver)
Backstage West
Dark Play or
Stories for Boys
October 17, 2007
By Les Spindle
Carlos Murillo's caustically funny and mildly frightening play spins an
intriguing yarn about deception and danger arising from cyberspace chatting.
Director Michael Michetti's viscerally enthralling West Coast premiere staging
ensures a gripping 100 minutes.
The story begins with a sexual encounter between college student Nick (Stewart
W. Calhoun) and Molly (Danielle K. Jones). When Molly asks Nick about scars on
his chest, he steps out of the action to address the audience. Should he tell
her the truth, or should he engage in a certain tactic -- which he calls
"making shit up" -- that he mastered on the Internet during his
chat-room connection, at age 14, with a gullible 16-year-old, Adam (Adam Haas
Hunter)? In flashbacks, we see Nick impersonate the identity of
"Rachel," convincing Adam that this nonexistent girl possesses the
qualities he's seeking in a mate. The stakes in this prank become higher when
Adam pressures "Rachel" for an in-the-flesh meeting, and the
hormonally driven Nick becomes excited at the prospect of meeting Adam. As lies
are added atop lies, the twisted web spins disastrously out of control.
Murillo's script ponders issues about problems that are engendered by
relatively new technology. Yet his piece works more as a nail-biting potboiler
than as a probing social drama. The hilarious first half, which primarily
establishes the cyberspace milieu, could be trimmed, and there are credibility
gaps in the story's climax. Nonetheless, Michetti's vibrant staging --
highlighted by set designer Donna Marquet's multiple hanging monitors, creating
an austere high-tech feel -- and a superb ensemble effort make for a
fascinating ride.
The charismatic Calhoun has the chops to carry the show, playing a manipulative
character who moves from precocious kid to seriously disturbed young man with
enough conviction and humor to captivate us throughout. He's marvelously
complemented by Hunter's excellent portrayal of the more empathetic youngster,
a naive teenager who gets more than he bargained for. Jones, Bethany Pagliolo,
and the particularly versatile Johnathan McClain shine in myriad small parts.
Though this doesn't feel like the definitive play about the ominous
ramifications of cyberspace cruising, it is parlayed into a thoroughly
entertaining evening.
Pasadena Star News
by Frances Baum
Nicholson
Ask almost any teenager - and many an adult - why he or she spends time
socializing on the Internet, and some element of facelessness will present
itself. The Web offers reinvention, where people can tout only the qualities
which they approve of most, or vent things in ways they could never do in their
more repressed or more shy, or even more ordinary lives. Of course, some take
this to extremes, creating people they aren't, either to do nefarious things,
or just to see how long they can continue the invention, like writing a novel
in real time.
This latter fascination with creation forms the basis of "Dark Play or
Stories for Boys" now receiving its west coast premiere at The Theatre @
Boston Court in Pasadena. Here playwright Carlos Murillo examines the
sociological experiment of an intellectually acute 14-year-old who creates a
female alter-ego and uses it to ensnare an idealistic older teen. For the
younger boy it smacks as much of a power fantasy as it does of romance, but as
it escalates, the control and invention become addictive, and almost fatal.
In the hands of Stewart W. Calhoun, Nick comes off as smart, witty, and
carrying that kind of sardonic innocence one often sees in young bright boys
who are sure they know more than all the adults around them. As his invented
"big sister," and also as the college girlfriend who inspires the
flashbacks we watch, Danielle K. Jones manages to be just what Nick asks for:
earnest, genuine, trusting and rather vibrantly all-American. Adam Haas Hunter
brings a heartwringing quality to the slightly gangling, sweet and hopeful boy
lured into Nick's net by the promise of true romance.
And these three form the core of the tale. Boston Court Artistic Co-Director
Michael Michetti places them in a marvelously spare space, as Donna Marquet's
collection of rolling monitors offers up whatever visual emphasis is deemed
necessary. Guiding the three central figures, Jonathan McClain and Bethany
Pagliolo play a dizzying array of other voices: teachers, mothers, a myriad of
created web characters. They are the glue which knits this piece together.
"Dark Play," which is based on a real incident, underscores the
weirdly impersonal connection of people on the net, who may share everything
but know nothing about each other. Manipulation and betrayal, power and
coercion are nothing new in theater or in life, but this new, instant,
anonymous entity gives them a spectacular playing field. And for Nick, who will
be the first to tell you he makes things up, a chance to do things nobody will
ever believe.
What: "Dark Play or Stories for Boys" When: Through November
18, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday Where: The Theatre @
Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave. at Boston Court in Pasadena How Much: $30
general, $25 senior Info: (626) 683-6883 or www.bostoncourt.org <http://www.bostoncourt.org>
LA CityBeat
By Don Shirley
How does the easy availability of porn and cyber relationships affect the experience of actual sex and real relationships? In new plays by Carlos Murillo and Kate Robin, the prognosis isn't pretty.
Murillo's dark play or stories for boys examines two teenagers, at first with a wry sense of humor. The younger, Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun), intrigued by his drama teacher's talk of role-playing, tries it out on the Web. He spots the chat room swooning of the slightly older Adam (Adam Haas Hunter), who says he wants to fall in love. Adam's requirements for his dream girl are so specific that Nick easily creates the online identity of fictitious "Rachel."
Nick manipulates Adam into not only falling for the girl but also into using his Webcam to "show his love" - Adam masturbates for Rachel (who, supposedly lacking her own Webcam, can't reciprocate). Next, Nick poses as Rachel's younger brother - first online, and then by using the promise of a real meeting with Rachel to lure Adam to the house that Nick shares with his single mother. There, Nick tells Adam that Rachel has been spirited away by their supposedly sinister stepfather. The fabrications become more elaborate - and the actual meetings between Nick and Adam more dangerous.
First produced at this year's Humana Festival in Louisville, dark play was written at a Santa Barbara theater lab in 2005. Murillo is Chicago-based, but the play is set in Southern California. So it's especially important to get it right in its local premiere. Michael Michetti's staging for the Theatre @ Boston Court is dazzling, not only in the authenticity it brings to these sometimes slippery characters but also in its sleek, computer-driven design.
Constructed around a flashback, Murillo's script reverts to that flashback point too often. It also raises a few questions without resolving them, but Michetti's production keeps everything clicking (literally, in Cricket S. Myers's sound design) with such driving rhythms that the audience will probably suspend exploring those unresolved questions until the conversation begins on the way home.
Frontiers
Darkplay or Stories for Boys
The Theatre at Boston Court, Through Nov. 18
If ever there were an argument for supervised after-school activities it's this intriguingly bleak play by Carlos Murillo about Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun), a 14-year-old boy with too much time, brains, and computer access on his hands. Oh, the sticky webs this child weaves when it comes to Internet identities and how skillfully director Michael Michetti steers his cast through the compounding morass. Calhoun excels as the brat terrible and Danielle K. Jones is beguiling as the nonexistent sister with whom he ensnares cyber-na•f Adam (Adam Haas Hunter, giving excellent dumb jock). Bethany Pagliolo, and Johnathan McClain complete the cast in their wide-ranging roles of Netizens, with Pagliolo as the dry martini to the flashy characterizations of McClain, who does both gruff and Garland-esque. The malevolent images of Austin Switzer's video designs enrich the script which, until the abrupt and overly neat end, is a fascinating exploration of the amorphous adolescent mind. - -WENZEL JONES
Pasadena Weekly
11/8/07
Vacuum packed
Morally ambiguous 'dark play or stories for boys' seems more like a modern prank gone bad
By Jana J. Monji
If you haven't been living under a rock, you know from the "Dateline" exposes that the Internet is far from safe. You also know that sometimes people - - like law enforcement officials and their cohorts - - pretend to be something they are not.
In Carlos Murillo's "dark play or stories for boys," we meet Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun) who's in bed with a girl (Danielle K. Jones) and is faced with "post-humping awkward silence." She asks a question and Nick addresses the audience, asking us, "Do I tell her the truth or do I make up shit?"
What may be the truth is the "dark play," a game that Nick's high school drama teacher (Bethany Pagliolo in one of many roles), an overly serious "dyke," defines as when "some players know the rules and some don't" and declares it the "best theater" because it takes one to a dangerous place.
The player who doesn't know the rules is Adam (Adam Haas Hunter), a charmingly sweet, gangly man-boy who is looking for love online, but is perhaps the target of Nick's cruel joke, if we can believe anything that Nick says.
Murillo's script is wordy and more like a prepared self-absorbed speech than a dialogue or fancifully woven tall tale. This intermissionless hour and 40 minutes is well paced and, despite the emotional cruelty portrayed, director Michael Michetti manages some brighter moments of humor, although one still doesn't quite like the protagonist Nick, even in the end.
Anyone who has spent time online will recognize some of the characters or "netizens" (well portrayed by Johnathan McClain and Pagliolo). The starkness of Donna Marquet's set and the 13 video monitors with Austin Switser's video design emphasize the emotional vacuum of Nick's world. Yet this isn't a parable or warning of the evils of online life. Rather, consider this a tale of a modern prank gone wrong, a provocative story from a boy's point of view, told without a particular moral tacked on.
IN Magazine
By Les Spindle
Dark Play or Stories for Boys
Theatre @ Boston Court
70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena
Thursday-Saturday 8 p.m.,
Sunday 2 p.m.
Through Nov. 18.
Tickets: $30
www.bostoncourt.org
Carlos Murillo's sardonically amusing new play at first seems to be aiming for an intriguing rumination on the extent to which deception- -and even danger- -can arise from cyberspace mind games, but it ultimately comes across mostly as a first-rate potboiler. Director Michael Michetti's West Coast premiere staging presents a sleek and atmospheric depiction of the Internet chat room culture. The high-tech milieu is marvelously captured via brilliant aural and visual elements.
College-student Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun) steps out of the play's first scene to address the audience, recounting the Internet connection he forged at age 14 with gullible 16-year-old Adam (Adam Haas Hunter). In flashbacks, we see Nick craftily create and impersonate the chat-room identity of "Rachel," convincing Adam that this nonexistent girl possesses the qualities he's seeking in a mate. The stakes escalate when Adam pressures "Rachel" for a meeting, and Nick lustily anticipates the prospect of meeting Adam, pretending to be Rachel's younger brother. As lies are compounded upon lies, the twisted web spins crazily out of control.
Calhoun carries the show like a champ, as the duplicitous Nick moves from ornery kid to seriously disturbed teenager. Equally fine is Hunter as a naive youth who blunders into a comedy of terrors. These top-notch actors receive yeoman support from Danielle K. Jones, Bethany Pagliolo and Jonathan McClain. This dandy show is like a gripping Hollywood potboiler, classed up by Michetti and his illustrious designers. This is the ideal chance for those who haven't been to the impressive Boston Court to check it out.
L.A. Times
By David Ng
Flirting with disaster online
It's not exactly news that the Internet can be a dangerous place filled with impostors, but that doesn't prevent playwright Carlos Murillo -- who has apparently just discovered instant messaging and MySpace -- from providing the scoop. His cautionary drama "dark play or stories for boys" embraces its online milieu with the enthusiasm of a neophyte. The play's big revelation: "On the World Wide Web, you can be anything!"
Geeky high school outcast Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun) utters those words as he plots to wreak havoc on the life of Adam (Adam Haas Hunter), a jock and the object of Nick's unrequited affection. Posing online as "Rachel," Nick engages Adam in a series of Internet chats, gradually maneuvering the gullible teen into his malevolent clutches. Nick is a kind of cyber Tom Ripley, a disturbed young man who becomes increasingly incapable of distinguishing his fabricated identity from the real one. His reptilian mind kicks into bloodthirsty gear when Adam demands that they take their relationship into the tangible world.
The production evokes the universe of online chat rooms with a dull literal-mindedness. Actors recite their lines facing the audience as onstage monitors flicker and a soundtrack of AIM-ish bloops remind us that what we're seeing takes place in cyberspace.
Top-heavy with narration, the play generates little suspense as Nick over-explicates his master plan with smug satisfaction. Murillo's dialogue can be amusing, especially when imitating dumb teen-speak, but the playwright has a tin ear for translating the online world into an engaging theatrical vernacular. For all of its techno-savvy pretense, his play feels woefully behind the curve.
LA TIMES READER REVIEWS
October 18, 2007
Rick Sherman Oaks, CA
Cyber cliches? What is David Ng talking about? "Dark Play" is based on a true story! The play is terrific. It's a very smart, suspenseful and insightful story -- and also timely -- about a kid who makes up stuff and messes with people online. Terrific performances and great direction. The LA Times got it wrong. This is defintiely worth seeing.
October 13, 2007
Sheila Burbank, CA
Breathtakingly good theater. Suspenseful, funny, timely and smart, beautifully staged with extraordinary direction and performances as good as I've seen on stage.
October 12, 2007
Michael Cohen N. Hollywood, CA
Boston Court continues its trend of innovative plays, stellar directing, and supertalented casts. Well worth the jaunt over to Pasadena.
October 10, 2007
Barbara Sommers Sherman Oaks, CA
Parts of the plot about Internet mischief are all too possible but it's the acting that makes this play worth seeing. Stewart Calhoun is superb. Danielle Jones gives a mesmerizing performance switching between real and virtual characters. The entire cast is amazing. I saw a preview and plan to see it again.
October 7, 2007
Michael Landman-Karny Huntington Beach, CA
Although parts of Carlos Murillo's script strain credulity, Michael Michetti's spot-on direction and a lead performance that is off the charts (it is that good) make this a must-see for all fans of psychological thrillers.
November 9, 2007
Kylie LA, CA
Totally amazing play. The actors are fantastic and the story is funny and creepy. The theater is also really great. Go see it.
November 3, 2007
Dennis Valley Village, CA
I found myself completely swept up in the intriguing and terrifying world of this play. The performances were brilliant and moving, the direction smart, theatrical and dynamic, and the design elements gorgeous. A high point of the theater season for me.
October 28, 2007
Chondra Los Angeles, CA
An intense and hilarious story about the internet. Really well done and great acting.
October 24, 2007
B. Montgomery Beverly Hills, CA
Exceptionally well directed contemporary theater. Very meaty, outstandingly well-acted personifications by Stewart W Calhoun and Adam Hunter. Danielle K Jones was witty and delightful, even while conveying subtle danger in entrapping the victim. Bethany Paglioli and J McClain were so good that they could both be multi-character players on Saturday Night Live. The stage set was a clever technical feat as well.
October 21, 2007
Doris Pasadena, CA
I agree. One of the best ensemble casts seen on stage this year, brilliantly directed by Michael Michetti. Another winner for Boston Court.
October 21, 2007
John and Maria Barrington Los Angeles, CA
Not only is dark play superb and thought provoking theater, but it showcases one of the finest ensembles we've seen this year. Stewart W Calhoun's Nick was brilliantly sadistic yet vulnerable, Adam Haas Hunter's transition from gullible innocence to inert rage was credible and moving, and the lovely Danielle K Jones' portrayal of the virtual Rachel was (as "Adam" said) "perfect." The versatility of Bethany Pagliolo and Johnathan McClain in their myriad roles was just plain fun to watch. BRAVO!!
October 21, 2007
Justin L.A., CA
This was an awesome play. Funny and suspenseful and emotional. Amazing actors especially the guy who played Nick. I had a great time.
October 20, 2007
Stephan West Hollywood, CA
Dear Mr. Ng, Sorry to disagree with you. I thought the play was powerful and the actors's performances were exceptional. If you had done some research, you would have found out that this play is based on a true story, so how cliche can it be? As always, Boston Court dazzles the audience with their production values and direction.
October 19, 2007
Theatergoer Seal Beach, CA
I must have seen a different play that the one David Ng reviewed. The play that I saw had a script that is very timely, actors who gave wonderful performances, and direction that was innovative. Ng must have gone to the wrong theater!
October 19, 2007
Peter Hunt Los Angeles, CA
I am incensed by David Ng's review. I could not disagree with him more about the merits of the play, which I find suspenseful, poetic, provocative, moving, and disturbing. But for him to overlook the brilliant performances, the superb direction, and the marvelous design contributions negates anything else he wrote in his ignorant and mean-spirited review. This is a play that can stand with the best regional theatre productions I have ever witnessed. I'll be canceling my LA Times subscription this morning.
DAILY VARIETY
Dark Play or Stories for Boys
(The Theater @ Boston Court; 99 seats; $30 top)
By BOB VERINI
Adam Haas Hunter, left, portrays an innocent caught in the web of Stewart W. Calhoun's character in 'Dark Play or Stories for Boys.'
A Theater @ Boston Court presentation of a play in one act by Carlos Murillo. Directed by Michael Michetti.
Nick - Stewart W. Calhoun
Adam - Adam Haas Hunter
Molly/Rachel - Danielle K. Jones
Female Netizen - Bethany Pagliolo
Male Netizen - Johnathan McClain
As any viewer of "To Catch a Predator" knows, the Internet's unique potential for empowering and shielding the unscrupulous provides the perfect setup for greater horrors to follow. When Carlos Murillo's "Dark Play or Stories for Boys" stays within that cyber-realm, it's riveting, but this twisted-teen computer romance, the talk of this year's Louisville Humana Fest now in its West Coast premiere, tries to multitask and freezes up. Even the typically sumptuous production offered by the Theater @ Boston Court can't keep this play from crashing.
The ghost in the machine is precocious, supercilious 14-year-old Nick (Stewart W. Calhoun), who, out of perversity and boredom, begins creating fake personas in Net chatrooms as a form of "dark play" -- any game in which some participants aren't aware of the rules or even of the game itself. It's all quick n' dirty online bitchslapping until he encounters gangly, sensitive 16-year-old Adam (Adam Haas Hunter), whose advertised "I want 2 fall in love" simultaneously amazes, repels and attracts the younger boy.Adam becomes the played and Nick the player once "Rachel," Adam's teen dream, begins appearing online to bewitch the youth. Master puppeteer Nick has the e-maginary gal pull the lovesick Adam all too willingly into an elaborate romantic and sexual fantasia, while hinting at a troubled home life that only whets his appetite to meet and protect her 4 real.
Where can it all lead? Nowhere good, judging by the chilling mood set by helmer Michael Michetti. Donna Marquet's sleek black-box environment and ubiquitous computer monitors, moody lighting (Lap-Chi Chu highlights the action in boxes of light that appear and vanish like online pop-up windows) and an almost-constant thrum of electronic music transform us into willing voyeurs in the dens and bedrooms of the Net's needy.
Yet the built-in limitations of an Internet affair create dramatic limitations as well.
We know Adam can never meet "Rachel," so Murillo must have Nick introduce his own bad self into the mix and, somewhat predictably, both fall for and take a bead on Adam's innocence. As Nick's scheming spirals out of control, Murillo's handling of the plot increasingly hinges on characters meeting in person to behave illogically and finally preposterously. The further "Dark Play" wanders from the chatroom, the more it beggars plausibility.
No help comes from expressionistic flash-forwards to Nick's college dorm room, with actors spinning a girl on his bed as Nick incants "The question ... the choice," wondering whether he should confess to her. But the choice should be moot. The sociopath we've come to know, as smug as Leopold and Loeb, wouldn't give a damn about telling a sex partner the truth, so the framing device just sits there in desultory staging that never builds, as if Michetti wished Murillo had hit "Delete" on those sequences as much as we do.
Show's pleasures largely stem from the contrast between the cleverly staged exotic cyberspace and the humanity of its denizens. Though Nick is initially insufferable, his floridly self-conscious verbosity not requiring the italics and quotation marks a smirking Calhoun lays on with a trowel, he garners some vulnerability later on.
Haas' instantly likable Adam wins sympathy as a helpless pawn, and Danielle K. Jones hits all the right keys personifying Nick's ultimate creation, her vivacity and wit enough to pull anyone into her Web. As Rachel and Adam's romance deepens through heartfelt entreaties and cutesy emoticons, evil genius Nick stands behind her, wordlessly orchestrating others' doom like a Shiva of the computer age. :-(
Sets, Donna Marquet; costumes, Rachel Myers; lighting, Lap-Chi Chu; video design, Austin Switser; sound design, Cricket S. Myers; production stage manager, Rebecca Cohn. Opened, reviewed Oct. 13, 2007. Runs through Nov. 18. Running time: 1 HOUR, 40 MIN.
