The second shoe to drop in Theatre at Arts Garage’s “Celebration of Women’s Voices” season is Lauren Gunderson’s compact, crafty two-hander, I and You, which arrives with the badge of this year’s $25,000 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award.
Reviewers, perhaps more than civilian theatergoers, enjoy being surprised and Gunderson more than obliges on that score. While her play initially seems to follow the formula of a romantic comedy, it features a huge plot twist in its final minutes that I, at least, did not see coming. Now, forget I ever mentioned that hairpin turn.
Concentrate instead on Caroline and Anthony, two high school students with so little in common a relationship seems far-fetched. So ill since birth that she remains confined to her bedroom, managing her school work by computer, Caroline has little contact with anyone other than her mother as she waits for a much-needed liver transplant. Still, as the play opens, Anthony appears in her room with the news that they have been paired on an English class assignment, due the next day.
Sullen, obstinate Caroline wants nothing to do with the project, particularly after she hears that it concerns the poetry of Walt Whitman. Basketball jock Anthony is as upbeat and gregarious as she is moody, and he is a big fan of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, an epic collection of poems on the unity of mankind and on learning to not fear death.
With waffle fries as a peace offering, Anthony starts trying to crack Caroline’s protective shell. Eventually, she shares information about her illness and her affinity for rock ’n’ roller Jerry Lee Lewis. Anthony rhapsodizes on the jazz of saxophonist John Coltrane and tells her a morbid tale of events on the basketball court that day at school.
Gunderson took a risk by writing a script that hinges on two young performers, but director Louis Tyrrell certainly found them in Gracie Winchester and Terry Guest. She manages to mine petulance in various ways and he is all persistence, trying to gain her cooperation. You and I is not an overly profound play, but theatergoers are likely to become involved with the lives of these two teens.
Just before the rug is pulled out from under them.
I AND YOU, Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. 1st St., Delray Beach. Through Sunday, Feb. 8. Tickets: $30-$45. Call: 561-450-6357.