READ REVIEWS
GET IN ON THE TEEN SCENES
TEEN REVIEWERS AND CRITICS
LINKS TO OTHER COOL STUFF
 Nicholas Feitel

Nicholas Reviews The Summer They Stopped Making Ludes by Another Urban Riff



Just as the up-upstairs addendum to Theatre Row (dubbed in GenMe fashion, the alt.space) is near impossible to find amidst a crowd of the not-so-young-anymore urban professionals and their touristy entourage, so is Steve Tanenbaum's new "urban riff" set in the early 70s, an agreeably pleasant to become lost in.

And the theme of being lost or, forgive me, "dazed and confused", is a prevalent one throughout 'Ludes, where the audience is not so much asked to suspend their disbelief as to embrace it wholeheartedly. Indeed, tripiness is essential to understanding most of the play's protagonists who themself seem to be coming out of various drug-induced dazes.

Art (who, as the title proclaims, is at various times a coyote) is first presented to us smoking a green apple before seeking truth with a convenient Deus Ex Don, while later Eve and Casey, race through uppers and downers in an attempt to reach a compatible haze. Even Monique, Casey's cold girlfriend, is vainly and impatiently demanding the eponymous drugs that seem to represent at the same time the American Dream and its inevitable demise. The irony of the play is that as these mish-mashed couples dive deeper into the sea of narcotics that is their daily fare, they become more and more puppets of a psychedelic god that by the end of the play fails to exist.

"Woodstock is dead," proclaims the soundtrack-breaking voice at the start of the play, but it isn't really until our quartet of protagonists is given to realize it. And 'Ludes is, in many ways, an epitaph to the free love soul of the sixties that takes two hours excluding intermission to read. It is a coming-of-age story in more ways than one, and for our generation it sets forfth a still strong message that disinformation leads to dispersal, dismay, and ultimately dis-truction. Although this is a new play from Mr. Tanenbaum and Ms. Tucker, who directed the play and who skillfully evokes the half-awake atmosphere that pervades it, it feels like a revival. And it is in the truest sense, for although the production doesn't call back to a previously performance, it hails from a pre-Habitat Carter era that is so true in its clouded unreality, that it provides even a 17 year-old with nostalgia for an era he never knew.

A shot of tequila is served during intermission so, as long as you didn't go with your dad, stick it to the man and down a glass of drunkeness, but prepare for sobriety in a mutually assured ending. Make sure to thank the music guy afterwards; he could be making much more money for hip-hop.