This Is Our Youth

Rating:
Summary: This Is Our Youth-a brief comment.
Review: A powerful exploration of lost youth during the Reagan Era. Lonergan has a gift for creating real dialogue and characters. Dennis, Warren and Jessica are all like people I have met. As someone who came of age during the same era, I can attest to the authencity of this work.

I also recommend "The Waverly Gallery" and the film, "You Can Count On Me", recently released in the US for further evidence of Lonergan's talents.

Rating:
Summary: Examining Youth
Review: In "This is Our Youth" Kenneth Lonergan portrays three strikingly different characters, Dennis, Warren and Jessica, growing up in Manhattan in the 1980's. Each is faced with different problems of the "Me" generation and struggles to justify his anger at the world in a time when there is nothing to rebel against. When Warren steals money from his father, the three teens are forced to step outside themselves for a night and face reality and one another. It is a moving and funny portrait, and one that anyone who has ever been a teenager can relate to. There is nothing stilted or unnatural in Lonergan's work, it flows easily and touches those who have experienced the turmoil of feeling lost and empty in a world filled with material things.

Rating:
Summary: The 80's Youth
Review: This is an amazing play, very moving. It captures the bizarre in the ordinary: the lives of three teenagers growing up in a troubled era and looking for ways to be different and stand for something, when there is nothing to rebel against. Wonderful characters, ideas, and dialogue. Beautiful in its simplicity and painful in its candour.