One of the more popular meaning-of-life encapsulations is that the bumpy ride is what it's all about, and that the perceived all-important destination is about as significant as a dart thrown by a blind man on a desert isle. So many good and important dramatic works end up with variations on cliches (be true to yourself, love is the answer, you can't run away from yourself), but we are willing to hear them again if they come as the conclusion of a story that takes us there in a fresh and insightful way. Stephen Karam's Speech & Debate is a modest example of this premise, that even well-grooved philosophies are enjoyable to revisit if the playwright provides us with an investment in his characters' manner of discovery.
The intimate Aurora Theatre, at which the actors are surrounded by the audience on three sides, is an excellent venue for Karam's almost dainty drama of three high-schoolers scampering about trying to save the world, or a pinhead version of it that they have magnified. First seen in New York only three years ago, the play uses the now-quaint Internet technology where AOL chat rooms are the go-to place for pick-ups. While online portability has radically changed, we still get the idea of teens tethered to lumpy desktops in their bedrooms as they snoop, rant, romance, and spin an electronic lasso that can anonymously wrangle up whatever they want.
For the smirky Diwata, definitely not one of the cool chicks, her dream is a theatrical career unchained by those nuisances known as traditions. Over-eager Solomon has decided the school newspaper is his steppingstone to a mantle place filled with Pulitzers. And every-nerd Howie, who just sorta wants to get laid, is swept up into a three-person A-Team in which the conspirators feed on one another to fulfill their own agendas.
Much of the charm of the play is that nothing really much happens, at least not in terms of the drama teacher's nervous interest in his male students that becomes the centerpiece of a grand inquisition that never happens. The laughs come from the recognizably fumbling passions they possess, presented at just the right temperature by director Robin Stanton. There is a lesson learned for each of the characters, nothing overtly dramatic except, possibly, for the sexually hammered-down Solomon, who takes a big step and creates his first screen name.
And then there are all the play's oddball delights, of Howie's primitively illustrated gay version of Cain killing Abel, or a scene of Diwata's musical that mashes up the Salem Witchcraft Trials with an Abe Lincoln who's a little light in his Size 14's. Maro Guevara, Jason Frank, and Jayne Deely all are believably young yet mature in their theatrical delivery. Holli Hornlein effectively completes the cast in a dual role of a teacher trying to tamp down scandalous material in the school paper, and an outside reporter happy to stir it up.
And for a musical-comedy fan, how can you not embrace a show that offers up a dirge for Mary Rodgers over changes the Salem High School is planning to make to Once Upon a Mattress? "Rest in peace, Mary," Diwata publishes on her blog, "whether it be in a grave or on your living room couch."
Speech & Debate will run at the Aurora Theatre through July 18. Tickets are $34-$45. Call (510) 843-4822 or go to www.auroratheatre.org.