Yen
a play by Anna Jordan
directed by Elly Green
Raven Theatre, Chicago
Thru May 5
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One of the things I most value about theater is how it lets me spend time observing people I might not much encounter in real life.
This has helped me identify with, and develop greater empathy for, individuals of many different backgrounds.
Even when a play presents characters who are predominantly unlikable, it can allow us to gain insight into why certain people are the way they are.
I have also come to realize that I needn't like the characters in the play to like to play itself, though this can make it harder to embrace.
I have also come to realize that I needn't like the characters in the play to like to play itself, though this can make it harder to embrace.
And on the surface, Yen--a play by Anna Jordan that ran Off-Broadway in 2017 and is now getting its Chicago premiere at Raven Theatre--is hard to embrace, even as it focused me on the unfamiliar.
The two-act piece features two brothers, Hench (played by Reed Lancaster) and Bobbie (Jesse Aaronson), specified as ages 16 and 13, respectively--though as cast, each seems at least 5 years older--who live on their own in a squalid apartment in East London.
Owning a single shirt among them, they are not in school and seemingly spend all their time insulting each other--often with crude sexual references--physically quarreling, playing combat video games or watching porn.
Occasionally their mom, Maggie (Tiffany Bedwell) stops by, usually drunk or otherwise addled, and it's easy to see why the boys are so troubled.
Maggie lives elsewhere with the latest in a series of husbands or lovers; Alan is unseen as is Maggie's mom, who had sometimes watched the kids but has run off.
Lancaster and Aaronson adopt British accents--not always convincingly, but good enough--and do a fine, if sometimes overexuberant, job of embodying the hyper-aggression of the teen brothers. Lancaster is particularly strong in the Hench role played by Lucas Hedges in New York, and somewhat reminds of the young star.
But while I appreciated the often discomfiting glimpse into aimless, teenage Britain--and could see the brothers' situation as a metaphor for inner city Chicago, where kids failed by parents, schools and society turn to gangs, drugs and guns--I didn't find the play all that theatrically convincing or compelling.
And while the arrival of an attractive new neighbor named Jennifer (an excellent Netta Walker)--who had been called Yen by her greatly missed late father--almost literally brings fresh air to the brothers and the play itself, the piece rarely feels much more than "just OK."
Things get rather dramatic in Act 2, including involving the boys' unseen but often heard dog--who is named Taliban for rather racist reasons--and at the very least, Yen is intense and fairly engrossing.
But while I applaud what I perceived as Jordan's underlying message--that love, tenderness and sunshine can brighten and change lives that have largely known only the opposite--the messaging feels a tad too trite, and the whole affair a touch inauthentic.
I fully realize that it would be almost impossible to cast actual 16 and 13 year old boys in a play being performed largely on school nights. And there is nothing inherently wrong with how Lancaster and Aaronson play their parts. But theoretically Raven should have sought Jordan's permission not to mention the ages, or to modify them to, say, 20 and 17.
Though I noted above that I didn't need to like a play's characters to like the play, Yen seems to be chronicling the reformation, rejuvenation and redemption of Hench and Bobbie, yet for reasons I won't spell out, I wound up liking both even less at the end of the play.
At least at the beginning they were somewhat empathetic.
Regardless of my feelings about Yen, I applaud Raven and its artistic director, Cody Estle, for bringing the play to Chicago.
It merits being seen, and whomever designed its promotional artwork deserves compliments.
But I found this tale of tumultuous brothers--not quite as heinous or humorous as those of Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West--to really only be relatively intriguing.
The two-act piece features two brothers, Hench (played by Reed Lancaster) and Bobbie (Jesse Aaronson), specified as ages 16 and 13, respectively--though as cast, each seems at least 5 years older--who live on their own in a squalid apartment in East London.
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| Photo credit on all: Michael Brosilow |
Occasionally their mom, Maggie (Tiffany Bedwell) stops by, usually drunk or otherwise addled, and it's easy to see why the boys are so troubled.
Maggie lives elsewhere with the latest in a series of husbands or lovers; Alan is unseen as is Maggie's mom, who had sometimes watched the kids but has run off.
Lancaster and Aaronson adopt British accents--not always convincingly, but good enough--and do a fine, if sometimes overexuberant, job of embodying the hyper-aggression of the teen brothers. Lancaster is particularly strong in the Hench role played by Lucas Hedges in New York, and somewhat reminds of the young star.
But while I appreciated the often discomfiting glimpse into aimless, teenage Britain--and could see the brothers' situation as a metaphor for inner city Chicago, where kids failed by parents, schools and society turn to gangs, drugs and guns--I didn't find the play all that theatrically convincing or compelling.
Things get rather dramatic in Act 2, including involving the boys' unseen but often heard dog--who is named Taliban for rather racist reasons--and at the very least, Yen is intense and fairly engrossing.
But while I applaud what I perceived as Jordan's underlying message--that love, tenderness and sunshine can brighten and change lives that have largely known only the opposite--the messaging feels a tad too trite, and the whole affair a touch inauthentic.
I fully realize that it would be almost impossible to cast actual 16 and 13 year old boys in a play being performed largely on school nights. And there is nothing inherently wrong with how Lancaster and Aaronson play their parts. But theoretically Raven should have sought Jordan's permission not to mention the ages, or to modify them to, say, 20 and 17.
At least at the beginning they were somewhat empathetic.
Regardless of my feelings about Yen, I applaud Raven and its artistic director, Cody Estle, for bringing the play to Chicago.
It merits being seen, and whomever designed its promotional artwork deserves compliments.
But I found this tale of tumultuous brothers--not quite as heinous or humorous as those of Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West--to really only be relatively intriguing.
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