Saturday, October 5th | 7:00pm | Newman Studio
How rich is your inner life? Laura Gunderson explores the inner psyche of two teenage classmates in her 2013 play, I and You. Basement Arts brings us a story full of action with just two characters: the homebound Caroline (Sofia Santos-Ufkes) and the cool-kid-type Anthony (Lyd Herrera). Caroline struggles with an unspecified terminal illness, spending all of her time on the internet, and Anthony is a seemingly straight-ahead student, a popular basketball player, and jazz enthusiast. He’s charming and mundane, she’s erratic and whimsical—makes for somewhat of a familiar teenage love story. Anthony’s unexpected entrance changes Caroline’s world forever.
Anthony’s entrance is sudden—he bursts in, insisting that he and Caroline finish their school project on the significance of pronouns in the poems of Walt Whitman. They had not been friends before, as Anthony took it upon himself to pair with Caroline, the mysterious pretty-girl who left school. The characters are originally played by a cisgender couple, but director Katy Dawson took a new approach to the script featuring a queer relationship.
The show naturally revels in its own character study spending nearly two hours in just one location—Caroline’s bedroom—with the same two actors. The dialouge becomes a callous game of tennis, one that Herrera and Santos-Ufkes mostly played well. Some of Gunderson’s writing can feel confined to a “high-school” movie stereotype, but Ms. Dawson’s direction navigated it with clever staging and re-interpretations of lines that may have previously sounded cliche. The show moves steadily through impassioned discussions and small quarrels until Gunderson decides to drop a massive twist no less than ten minutes to the end. Ms. Dawson gets you comfortable in the world of Caroline and Anthony until you’re forced to question the entire universe that just enveloped you for two hours.
For a show with two actors in one location, Ms. Dawson’s staging was far from dull. It seems she experimented with every possible stage shape in Caroline’s room. Her conceptualization of the piece as a whole was clear and beautiful, and it would be remiss not to point out the pristine cohesion of the set, marketing, and world-building—how satisfying.
Anthony’s character, while intriguing for defying typical casting norms, left me with questions. Caroline’s energy seemed erratic to that of Anthony—was his lack of energy intended to reflect his “cool-kid” mentality? I often wished for more vibrancy from Hererra to keep up with the playful spark of Santos-Ufkes. Anthony’s composure was comforting, yet his objective was sometimes unclear, which made me wonder if this was reliant on the show’s shocking finish to justify.
Ceri Roberts curated an utterly stunning set for this production in the Newman Studio (Walgreen Drama Center). Draping white cloths hung from the ceiling as well as textured cut-outs of stars and moons, with thoughtfully curated motifs of love and illness sprinkled throughout Caroline’s eclectic bedroom. It was a gift that kept on giving throughout the show.
This script is sprinkled with the intrusive emotions of youth—fear, awkwardness, and peer pressure that make for a relatable and sentimental story. This piece is wildly appropriate for collegiate and youth theater with Gunderson’s beautifully written roles for young actors who are dismissed in modern works, more often than not.
In many ways, the show is parallel to its motif of poetry—intimate, aesthetic, and poignant. The vibrant light of youth shines bright in this show, in ways both expected and unexpected.
“I and You” runs October 4th & 5th in the Newman Studio. (Note: When referring to the characters, I use the pronouns from the original text.)
Photos thanks to Basement Arts and Ellie Vice.
