Dig Into the World of Teen Angst With "Speech & Debate" at Convergence-Continuum

Credit: Photo Credit Robert Wachala/convergence-continuum

Stories about misfit kids are legion, from “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky to the adolescent touchstone of Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” It makes sense, since that time between teen-hood and adulthood is so fraught with complexities involving identity, sex, and life in general.

In the play Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam, now at Convergence-Continuum Theatre, a galaxy of teenage angst is spread out by focusing on two boys and one girl whose personalities and desires are aflame as they try to discover where they fit.

Since they each have a voice that can’t be heard, the three outcasts bond together and form a Speech and Debate Club. They are the only members, with dreams of performing at a national American Forensic Society convention.

The script by Karam is loaded with spot-on teenage chat during the “aughts” (the play premiered in 2007), and there are laugh lines aplenty. Plus, those three roles—emerging gay boy Howie, budding investigative journalist Solomon, and wannabe stage actress Diwata—are played by three actors who each have their own appealing characteristics.

But the production under the direction of Léo Fez feels rushed, and the bulldozed pacing results in scenes that are incomplete. This happens since the feelings of the characters seem unearned, and that leaves the audience in the lurch.

The play and its characters are tech savvy, and that is displayed up front as Howie, using the pseudonym “BLBOI” (ie. Blond Boy) participates in an on-line chat with a guy named “BIGUY.” The joke in the original play was that Howie was a white kid with dark brown hair, and this gag is further explored in this production since Howie is played by a Black actor (an excellent Brandon Alexander Smith).

These high-schoolers find each other because they’re trying on identities that fit them best. Solomon is eager to writes article for the school newspaper about local sex scandals involving the mayor and a teacher at the school, but he’s shut down by the paper’s faculty advisor.

As Solomon, Keniel Keeney is a dweeb with a purpose as he tries to fight for journalistic integrity under the suffocating rules of this high school in a small, conservative town in Oregon.

And Diwata is a free spirit who harbors a fervent dislike for Mr. Healy, the teacher directing the next school play. He has decided to change the storyline of “Once Upon a Mattress” by eliminating the fact that Lady Larken is pregnant out of wedlock. She rages at this move, disturbed that “an unwed storybook mom is too scandalous for a school that already has a Teen Mom support group.”

Adult hypocrisy is on the grill and Diwata, played by Zoë Frager, has her own online venue where she roasts the show director with her own song: “Mr. Healy, you’re a crap sandwich/get some bread, your balding head, and some more bread/you have your head between bread: crap sandwich.”

Frager has a warm stage affect, which works well, but her character’s edgy, eccentric personality—she wants to write a musical version of “The Crucible,” complete with naked forest dancing.) But that side of her is muted, so we don’t see how she gets under the skin of her teachers and even some of her classmates.

The script for Speech and Debate has complications involving rhetoric competitions and other sharp turns that need to be explored, not rushed past. Unfortunately, the direction consistently drives the actors to deliver the lines without taking necessary beats.

This rapid pace of line delivery doesn’t allow for the characters to think their way through their thoughts and, not incidentally, denies the audience time to register those thoughts and grasp a sense of who these young people are.

Still the three young actors, along with Carolyn Demanelis who briefly appears as two craven adult characters, have their moments. And that’s when this this version of Speech & Debate stands and delivers.

Speech & Debate
Through August 24 at Convergence-Continuum Theater performing at The Liminis Theater, 2438 Scranton Road, Cleveland, 216-687-0074, convergence-continuum.org.

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