Girls vs. Boys
House Theatre of Chicago

Raw & Gritty & Sexy & In Your Face

    Urban Musical

 

" this is as close as an off-Loop Chicago theater has recently come to a made-from-scratch development of a new rock musical" - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

 

".. if there’s ever a midnight festival of cult plays, Girls vs. Boys belongs on the list" - John Beer, TimeOut Chicago  



04/08/10 - 05/29/10


John Beer, TimeOut Chicago 4-22-10 - "Toward the end of the House’s floridly emo new musical, shirtless teen Kreuger (Joel Gross) writhes like Iggy, framed by Collette Pollard’s industrial set. With the sound off, it might seem like an iconic rock moment. Then we realize he’s singing “Danger, Danger, Teenager,” featuring lyrics along the lines of “What do I mean?” and backed by a score charitably described as generic. It’s not a bad summation of this sharply designed, deeply strange piece.

Girls vs. Boys raises plenty of questions: Why do the guys wear so much eye makeup? Who suggested that Lane sing like that? What kind of budget does the House Theatre reserve for crepe paper? At its center is the daunting dilemma posed by Casey (Tyler Ravelson): Is it better to submerge your emotions with the drugs your doctor prescribes or to live with raw feelings, even if your psychopathic tendencies lead you to beat people to death? Judging from the behavior of life-of-the-party George (Kevin Stangler), the primary side effect of Casey’s drugs is a desire to wear vests without a shirt. Kids, don’t do drugs.

Awash with glitter and Glocks (the titular girls and boys draw guns on one another to, you know, symbolize emotional danger), the new musical remains kind of compulsively watchable for all its odd narrative logic. An Up with People show that dreams of being Spring Awakening, it features a young cast whose energy borders on the manic. Its sonic allusions to Nirvana and “Baba O’Riley” may be ill-advised, but if there’s ever a midnight festival of cult plays, Girls vs. Boys belongs on the list"


Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 4/20/10 - "You don't really need the subtitle — “a loud new musical” — to grasp that the all-new, hot-to-trot rock musical by the House Theatre of Chicago is trafficking in teenage archetypes. Any show that calls itself “Girls vs. Boys” isn't exactly approaching relationships — emotional, sexual, empowering, destructive — with a glancing blow.

Therein lays this nascent show's greatest strength and its most debilitating weakness.

Teenagers, the simultaneously comforting and alienating creatures with whom this musical (book and lyrics by Chris Mathews, Jake Minton and Nathan Allen with score by Kevin O'Donnell and Allen) is shrewdly concerned, aren't exactly known for shading their emotions. The familiar archetypes — dark-souled geek, sexually adventurous freshman, sensitive brooder, needy diva — are endlessly recycled because of their target audience's endless appetite for reliving them. It's a loop, a self-fulfilling prophecy. And this show has just a glint of the kind of self-awareness that can make it all work again.

“Girls vs. Boys,” which follows a little clutch of over-dramatic teens through parties and deserted playgrounds, looking for love and acceptance even as beats pound and hormones rage, is a bit like a John Hughes movie with original songs, or a musical version of John C. Russell's “Stupid Kids.” It's hardly fresh, but nor is it past its sell-by date. The hoards of pumped-up kids in the audience mosh pit in the middle of Collette Pollard's slick runway-like setting seemed to feel like it was very au courant. And they were, I think, delighted with the show's flashy sexuality and its non-judgmental, empowering tone. You know when a show is on your side. House makes ‘em feel at home.

“Girls vs. Boys” has a mostly percussive-based score that, intermittently, pops out with something sweet, melodic and arresting. It was developed at the American Musical Theatre Project at Northwestern University last summer (I saw that original student production, but did not write about it). Most of a terrible original book has, thankfully, been torpedoed in favor of a more straightforward and empathetic narrative involving six credible teenagers with the usual crises (love, sex, pills, acceptance, the need to perform). As the show mostly takes place at drug-and-booze-fueled parties and, since these characters are inclined toward the dramatic, that allows for an intensely theatrical atmosphere and plenty of naked flesh and amped-up singing (or, in a few egregious cases, screeching).

Every so often, the characters pull out sparkly guns and shoot each other — in the heart, the show seems to be saying. That's a motif only a teen could love, but as the success of “Glee” proves, there are plenty of stage-struck youths and “Girls vs. Boys,” which features plenty of titillation and impassioned performances, will attract commercial attention.

For that attention to turn into anything, it will need another angle. The show doesn't want to be specific about anything like place or geographic milieu, which is fair enough, but it needs something (or somewhere) else for it to hang its hat, lest it drown in its own generic soup for the teenage soul. It need an off-beat nuance, a new motif, a calling card — a sense that today's teens may still worry about this stuff but also inhabit a very different world.

That could be achieved through the music, which is very promising but not always well performed or highlighted; the quality of the singing varies widely, but far too often the lyrics are tough to follow and attitude trumps craft. The same could be said of the choreography. Although the likes of Joel Gross and Kevin Stangler have their moments, the best scenes take place between the two characters, geeks played by the stellar Nicky Scheunke and Tyler Ravelson, who most resist the pervasive partying. The show needs to find them more company.

To be sure, Allen has a very young and inexperienced cast whose intensity, fearlessness and commitment carries this piece mostly though the night (although it's a half hour too long). The ambition of “Girls vs. Boys” is infectious; this is as close as an off-Loop Chicago theater has recently come to a made-from-scratch development of a new rock musical in the “Spring Awakening” or “American Idiot” mode. Allen has to keep his optimistic passion, regardless of cynical criticism. And even though he has neither Frank Wedekind nor Green Day in his corner, he has to find a hook upon which to showcase, and impale, his enthusiastic girls and boys".


Monica Westin, NewCity Chicago 4/19/10 - "Most bad theater experiences are awkward for everyone involved, but this might be the first production I’ve seen with an awful lot wrong with it technically—an incredibly hackneyed plot, cheesy writing, very questionable artistic choices, harsh sound, some really bad singing—that’s massively entertaining to watch. It’s a profoundly peculiar theatrical experience, and a reminder that there might be a place for cult theater as much as cult movies. As a cult theater experience, this play might have it all: glam-rock/high-emo style (Remember emo? Director/artistic director Nathan Allen does.),  glitter-covered guns (shot to express metaphorical pain, which is signified by red rose petals), and often off-key rock ballads with laughably bad lyrics. A girl sings about her virginity with “I’ve been afraid to open up all the way” and,  in the final song-and-dance number, she wails “take away my sharpest toys and leave me to bleed.” The play follows a group of stereotypical high-school students as they cope with sex, drugs that almost keep them from committing homicide,  and said rock ‘n’ roll. And yet it’s nothing if not amusing, either unwittingly or not—how seriously this show takes itself, and theater, for that matter, is up for infinite debate"

Sarah Terez Rosenblum, Centerstage.com 4/18/10 - "Walking into the "Girls Vs. Boys" opening, you're awash in a sea of hyped Wicker Parksters, all ironic cans of PBR and slouchy boots. Infectious, the party atmosphere extends into the theater space, where an ingenious set mimics a club, a pit of milling audience members separating seated area from stage. As the onstage band rips into wild, opening chords, manically dancing cast members slip from the audience, singing their way onstage.

It's all pulse-poundingly fantastic, until you catch a lyric ("The king has an evil twin / If he could look in the mirror he could win") or a snatch of dialogue ("Hey, that's awesome." "Yeah." "Well, awesome." "Yeah."). Two songs in, it's clear. This is no rock opera, this is "Saved By the Bell."

All swagger, no soul, "Girls Vs. Boys" is an affront to all musical-theater fans. It's as if a 15 year-old with his pot dealer on speed-dial was like, "I've eaten all the cheese in the house. Now I'm going to write a musical. Can't be that hard."

Here's as much of the plot as I can bear describing: Seems some dude (Tyler Ravelson) is off his pills, searching a college party for his freshman sister (Dillan Arrick), while another dude (Joel Gross) who impregnated some chick (Nicky Scheunke) is now with this other chick (Whitney White) and sometimes? If one of the dudes or chicks is singing? And things get really, you know, emotional? There's a key change, 'cause that makes shit rilly intense. When belting doesn't get the job done, the kids whip out their bedazzled pistols and aim them at each other, like "Puttin' on the Ritz" meets "A Clockwork Orange," with Simon, Ellen and Randy sipping from giant cups of Coke.

The enthusiastic cast is having such a fantastic time that it's hard to begrudge them, but really guys, just because you're swinging from scaffolding doesn't mean you're staring in "Jesus Christ Superstar"...or "Rent"...or even "Tick Tick Boom." Musical theater at its best is life-altering, the result of endless revisions, passion, talent, an overarching theme, some grasp of grammar and syntax. Rose petals, a disco ball, wailing guitars and glitz-doused skinny jeans don't cut it. You can't pose your way to the sublime.

Rather than take my word for it, allow the show's lyrics to speak for themselves: "Look, there's my knee / and I mean it to be / for his hand to go there.  Take that, Tim Rice".

 

From the director  - Hard drinking, pill popping, parties and sex - these kids can have anything they want. But when six hot-blooded heartbroken teenagers decide they want more, life really gets dangerous. Now they're on a high-stakes quest to find love by the end of the night... even if it kills them. 


Originally developed by House artistic director Nathan Allen at Northwestern University in conjunction with the American Music Theatre Project, this production is a rawkus pop-opera with an original electronic score.

Author
Director /Co-writer - Nathan Allen; Co-writer - Jake Minton; Co-writer - Chris Mathews

Director
Nathan Allen

Performers
Dillan Arrick, Whitney White, Nicky Scheunke, Jash Eskew, Brie DeGiulio, Kelley Abell, Danielle Plisz, Joel Gross, Tyler Ravelson, Kevin Stangler, Brandon Ruiter, Matt Deitchman, Travis Porchia, Patrick Martin

Production
Scenic/Properties Designer - Collette Pollard; Costume Designer - Ana Kuzmanic; Assistant Costume Designer - Melissa Torchia; Lighting Designer - Sarah Hughey; Assistant Lighting Designer - Jill Bowarchuk; Properties Master - Dan Katz; Sound Designer - Brett Masteller; Composer - Kevin O’Donnell; Music Director - Ethan Deppe; Choreographer/Movement - Tommy Rapley; Assistant Director - Kelly Kerwin; Assistant Choreographer - Joey Stone; Production Manager - Jerem; Stage Manager - Kathleen Dickinson; Assistant Stage Manager - Thrisa Hodits; Technical Director - Matt Buettner; Rigging Consultant - Ryan Poethke; Rigging Consultant - Dan Monti; Master Electrician - Will Dean; Wardrobe Supervisor - Liz Wilson; Sound Engineer - Patricia Cardona; Sub Sound Engingeer - Andrew Wheatley; Production Assistant - Sean Cummings; Production Mgmt. Intern - Andrew Tolbert; Conductor/Keys - Ethan Deppe; Assistant Music Director - Nicholas Davio

Tags: Theater, American, 2010