Jailbait

Anyone who knows me well wouldn't be surprised that I would jump at the chance to go see a play called Jailbait. After all, for about three months I was the managing editor of a stroke-book called Finally Legal. But of course this play, presented by the Cherry Lane Theater at their new theater, The Cherry Pit, isn't about titillation, but is instead a humane, funny, heartbreaking and expertly-written tale about a culture that rushes young girls into adulthood, and the men who take advantage of them.

Written by Deirdre O'Connor, Jailbait is a four-character play. In the first scene we meet Claire (Natalia Payne) and her friend Emmy (Wrenn Schmidt). They are both fifteen, but haven't been hanging out together much anymore. Claire is dealing with her father's death, and Emmy is fifteen going on twenty-five (it's well-known that she's already had sex). Claire's mother is going out for the evening (but not on a date, she insists) and Emmy convinces her to tag along to a club, where they will get in with fake IDs and meet older men. Emmy has one guy in mind, a man she met the previous week, and he's bringing along a friend for Claire. They will pose as college students, and Emmy has already told her older beau that Claire goes to Harvard. Claire wonders why she couldn't have picked Emerson instead.

At the club, we meet the guys, both thirtysomethings. Mark (Peter O'Connor) is a player, a guy who has no interest in commitment. "My first wife hasn't been born yet," he tells Bobby (Kelly AuCoin), a guy getting over the end of a long-term relationship, who doesn't go to clubs (and is mocked by Mark for his khaki Dockers outfit). But Bobby is willing to go along with the fix-up, hoping the girl is at least intelligent. When he meets Claire he finds her sweet, and they both get along famously. Meanwhile, Emmy gets shit-faced and realizes that Mark expects her to go home with him.

O'Connor creates magic in these characters. All of the scenes involve only two characters on stage at a time, and the dialogue is full of polished gems. Mark has most of the best lines, such as when he describes married life as "evenings of Netflix and matching Banana Republic outfits." Also, the characters all are fully realized, and though we are set up to believe that they are one thing, turn out to have hidden depths, so that the action in the play is completely unpredictable. One engaged woman sitting behind me gasped several times at turns in the plot.

The direction, by Suzanne Agins, is unobtrusive and spotless. The stage is very small and mostly bare, and has to serve as a girl's bedroom, a club (and it's men's and women's room) and a man's apartment. I was a bit put off by the cerulean wall in the back of the stage (which was designed by Kina Park)--other than being a vivid bright blue, there was no apparent reason for that color choice.

I save for the last the acting, which was terrific, particularly by Payne. The two young women playing the girls were of course not fifteen. I suppose it could be played by real teens, but given the subject matter it might be too unsettling to see girls that young kissing grown men. Payne and Schmidt reveal in their bios that they are college graduates, so they are probably in their mid-twenties, so they are playing fifteen-year-olds who are trying to pass as twenty-one. It's a tricky assignment, and they both pull it off with aplomb. Schmidt's Emmy is the girl who fancies herself far more mature than she really is, while Payne still has a toe in little-girlhood but is more mature than she knows, but she's still not an adult. In the dialogue she has with AuCoin, where he is treating her like a Harvard student, the complexities of what is going through Claire's mind are easily seen on Payne's face, and in her body movements.

This is to take nothing away from AuCoin, who plays a man who allows himself to live again after ending a six-year relationship that almost led to marriage, yet finds himself in perilous waters with a girl far younger than he thinks. There is a glitch in that it could be difficult to understand how he and Mark could still be friends (they met in high school) when they have such fundamental differences in their approaches to relationships, but I think we all have friends we should have ditched years ago. It isn't a stretch to believe that after the end of this play the two men will no longer be bosom buddies.

Jailbait is a terrific evening of theater. I have no idea what it's future will be, and it's probably too small to move to Broadway, although the talent involved is good enough to make the transition.