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I just got home from Badass Theater Company's reading of Deirdre O'Connor's play Jailbait. Last year Badass staged Invasion!, which I enjoyed immensely and which received solid reviews (3) (4), and besides, a dear friend of mine was in the cast, so I was looking forward to this reading. I wasn't disappointed.
Jailbait is about the night two 15-year-old girls sneak out to a 21+ club to hook up with two overage --- two way overage --- men. Obviously, this means dealing with sex and coming of age in very uncomfortable ways. But Jailbait goes beyond that, to a discussion of loss, coping with loss, peer pressure, honesty with others, honesty with oneself, and what it means to be in a relationship as both a teenager and as an adult. Jailbait is like Invasion! in that both use a relatively simple foil to explore a lot of complex subjects.
I thought Jailbait was an intense performance with a lot of potential, but that as a staged reading it lost a lot of impact. With a full-on production, Jailbait could be a very powerful play indeed. Badass Theater Company should pull it off with style if Invasion! is any guide. The one piece of advice I would offer to Badass Theater Company is not to try resetting the play in Portland. Last year they tried to set Invasion! in Portland, and I think that fell flat, detracting from the impact of that play. They can avoid that with Jailbait by keeping that play set in Boston.
Jailbait is about the night two 15-year-old girls sneak out to a 21+ club to hook up with two overage --- two way overage --- men. Obviously, this means dealing with sex and coming of age in very uncomfortable ways. But Jailbait goes beyond that, to a discussion of loss, coping with loss, peer pressure, honesty with others, honesty with oneself, and what it means to be in a relationship as both a teenager and as an adult. Jailbait is like Invasion! in that both use a relatively simple foil to explore a lot of complex subjects.
I thought Jailbait was an intense performance with a lot of potential, but that as a staged reading it lost a lot of impact. With a full-on production, Jailbait could be a very powerful play indeed. Badass Theater Company should pull it off with style if Invasion! is any guide. The one piece of advice I would offer to Badass Theater Company is not to try resetting the play in Portland. Last year they tried to set Invasion! in Portland, and I think that fell flat, detracting from the impact of that play. They can avoid that with Jailbait by keeping that play set in Boston.
