Speech and Debate at Seattle Rep

Review: Speech and Debate at Seattle Rep

I think Stephen Karam’s Speech and Debate, his debut play about three misfit teens bonding in a Salem Oregon high school Speech Club and debating on how to deal with a drama teacher who might be preying on his students, aims to be controversial and timely and thought provoking but turns out to be nothing more than a crowd pleasing, middle of the road dramedy with the intellectual depth of an After School Special or maybe a very special episode of “Degrassi High”. Currently playing at the Leo K Theater at Seattle Rep, it’s a small play that seems better suited as a midnight show at a Capitol Hill fringe theater broadly acted by young actors aping characters they’ve seen on “Strangers with Candy”.

Yet, strangely, this play was a surprise hit off-Broadway, earned good reviews from the New York Times and has done very well on the regional theater circuit. Seattle Rep’s Artistic Director Jerry Manning damns it with faint praise in his “Letter to our Patrons” admitting he didn’t see much to offer in the play but was talked into doing it by the overwhelming support of the under 30-somethings in the Rep offices. I can understand why those young theater geeks love this play; it’s a Gay Theater Nerd play written by a Gay Theater Nerd who had the very good fortune to be prescient enough to ride the Gay Theater Nerd wave that’s been sweeping the country for the last couple years with the success of “High School Musical” and “Glee”. All of a sudden, it’s COOL to be a theater geek and I was surrounded by them at last night’s performance of Speech and Debate. The Rep has to be happy that this small show is able to nearly fill the Leo K. with a younger than usual crowd on Super Bowl Sunday with a large range of ages present from a couple of not quite tweenagers to many people in their 20’s and 30’s…(for once at a mainstream theater, I wasn’t one of the youngest members of the audience.) Theaters across the country struggle to fill seats with anyone under the age of 40; this show’s success can be attributed to its ability to pull in that crowd.

And, while I can acknowledge the success of this play and the fact that the audience generally seemed to like it, I have to be honest and say it’s not a very good play and it wasn’t even a particularly good production of a not very good play. Andrea Allen’s direction was perfunctory at best and the staging often seemed forced and phony; a long telephone conversation between the two male characters dragged on interminably as the actors just stood there, facing the audience on opposite sides of the stage with little variation in movement. The one set design by Matthew Smucker was mostly fine; a starkly white, fluorescently lit, concrete bunkered modern American classroom but the play features scenes set in many different locales and the setting and lighting didn’t always manage to convey the changes in time and space. Christine Meyer’s costumes confused me; they weren’t realistic enough to be believable and they weren’t quite over the top enough to be camp. Particularly ill-served was Erin Stewart who played Diwata, the theater crazed female character obsessed with her lack of success in her high school theater department. Diwata is an odd, larger than life character, and a huge crowd pleaser with the audience (I thought the character was borderline sociopathic/psychotic) and naturally, like many teens, wears odd clothes but Meyer’s costumes were not flattering to the character or the actress who played her; cut off shorts over tights might be a cute, kooky look but not really a desirable one for a mid-twenties actress trying to pass herself off as 17…and failing.

Trick Danneker as the out gay student Howie and Justin Huertas as the sexually conflicted student Solomon are slightly more believable as teens and of the two, Huertas has the trickier role and manages to gradually make a very dislikeable and clichéd character into something approaching likeability by the play’s end. Danneker is stymied by a character that isn’t given much to do other than be sexy and the Object of Our (and the other character’s) Affections, but Danneker’s talent and flat abs manages to convey a minor degree of dimensionality. As for Amy Thone**, one of Seattle’s most talented actresses, she is wasted in the small dual roles of a teacher and a reporter, the only adult characters we see in the play. Neither role is very important (I’m not sure if they are even necessary), but Thone manages to make each one distinct and interesting, in particular having fun with the role of a pretentious, self-absorbed writer who ends up serving as a minor Plot Device/Good Fairy to help tie up the ends of the story.

And the production’s parody of a typical NPR style broadcast of the writer’s piece of reportage on the new Speech club is one of the few clever and witty moments in the play. Sadly, these moments are few and far between in Speech and Debate, but I will give a minor shout out to a humorous but contrived production number involving the young cast and George Michael’s song Freedom. It is a funny/dumb moment and illogical that a song originally released about the same time the characters were born would be so pivotal in their lives, but the audience thoroughly enjoyed the moment. The play seems determined to tap into the universality of being a teenager (we all go/suffer through it, geeks and popular kids alike) and I have to reluctantly agree, the play does succeed on that level.

And it does succeed, in its own way, like most middle-brow entertainment. I can’t say I liked this play or this production but I would be stupid if I didn’t acknowledge that it does have entertainment value, (I was seldom bored); there are some genuinely funny lines in the script and the energy and emotion of the performances helps to smooth out the plot irregularities and contrivances, (i.e., the drama teacher at the center of the story seems to get away with having sex with underage students). Theater geek types and “Glee” fans of all ages will probably have a good time and non-geek types who get dragged to it with spouses and lovers will leave surprised they had a pleasant enough time without a remote control and a Bud Lite in their hands. Only hard-core theater types will leave with a wanting feeling and a need for a production with a bit more depth and comic originality. Or, at the very least, seeing Speech and Debate in its proper venue, a dark cave-like fringe space, at midnight on a Friday or Saturday night, with a well-stocked bar and ham actors treating the text for what it really is, a rejected script for a Comedy Central parody show…

Speech and Debate plays through February 21, 2010 in the Leo K. Theater at Seattle Rep. For more info and tickets, visit www.seattlerep.org. And, a BIG shout out to the Box Office for their fantastic customer service in straightening out a problem with our tickets. They went beyond the call of customer service duty. Thank you!

“Recommended for ages 14 and above for mild profanity, teens engaged in discussions of sex, drinking and drug abuse.”

**Small Conflict of Interest: Hundreds of years ago, in a decrepit university theater program run by a insane madman, Ms Thone and Mr Strangeways (under his realer but duller name) acted together in The Madwoman of Chaillot and Whose Life is it Anyway? as freshman ingenues. Wisely, Ms Thone pulled up stakes after that year and transferred to another school and our paths only crossed once or twice in those collegiate years in that Midwestern burg, and since those halcyon days, have not spoken to each other in over 20 years. Ms Thone was a very good amateur/student actress then; she is a very accomplished professional actress now. She was (and I doubt she has changed much in the last 25 years) funny and bawdy and always very modest to the point of self-deprecation about her talents. And, anyone who can survive Henry Blanke, can survive anything…

-Michael Strangeways