Electra splashed honey and oil on Agamemnon’s tomb and cursed her killer mom. Hamlet wore suits of solemn black and chatted up a ghost. Masha also slayed in funeral garb, mourning her so-called life in tsarist Russia. Moody youths staggered by the finality of death and the emotional nausea of surviving? Theater has it covered. Playwright Eliya Smith adds to the literature with Grief Camp, an elliptical and episodic vibe of a dramedy that laces defiant quirk through deep pain as a cohort of teenagers retreat to the woods and process feelings.
Paused for three months by a stagehand strike but now back at the Atlantic Theater Company, Grief Camp signals the first major production of the talented Smith. The 27-year-old has the good fortune to work with the great Les Waters (Dana H.), a longtime new-play whisperer who specializes in snaky dramaturgy and design-forward staging that’s heavy on atmospherics. Waters has been busy of late; he’s shuttling from the Atlantic two miles uptown to the Signature Theatre as he preps a revival of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice—the idiosyncratic twist on Greek myth that he directed almost 20 years ago (also about grief). The emerging Smith and the elder Waters neatly complement each other for this gently lapping, 90-minute wash of wistful, sweet-and-salty exchanges between wounded kids who have lost siblings or parents. Smith churns out the glib, ironic memespeak of Baby Zoomers (cusp of Gen Alpha) perpetually giving “edgy nerd.” Waters and his design team surround the banter and social dynamics with evocative touches (real rain, the play of sunlight, a guitarist strumming on the periphery) and pace each scene to bring out sad strangeness in each character.
Mood is key. I suspect if Smith’s script were played at speed for comic charm, it would be rather irritating. Everyone talks more or less in the same hyperarticulate deadpan, very Wes Anderson. Or Anderson if he let Annie Baker script one of his films. In fact, Smith assisted Baker on Infinite Life nearly two years ago at the Atlantic and is still her playwriting student at the University of Texas at Austin. Smith has clearly absorbed her prof’s signature tactics. Scenes unfold with awkward spontaneity, eschewing plot twists for an organic, unhurried tempo of life, tracing the halting, negative space of daily speech. The difference is that Smith’s characters are more urbane and name-droppy than Baker’s usually earnest folk. These overeducated, overmedicated tykes bond over German choreographer Pina Bausch and joke about being microinfluencers or revel in antique expressions such as “besmirch” and “smite.” Like the team of Baker and director Sam Gold (or, with Infinite Life, James Macdonald) Smith churns out self-consciously heightened dialogue which needs sensitive acting and tonally precise direction in order to be affecting, not affected.
This ensemble is up to the task, six young performers and two older ones: a mostly silent guitarist (Alden Harris-McCoy) and Danny Wolohan as Rocky, the camp director heard over a crackly loudspeaker, prone to meandering, philosophical morning announcements (not a huge surprise when he misattributes a story to Anne Carson). The campers represent a range of artsy dreamers, territorial boys, sexually curious pubescents—all tiptoeing toward the rest of their lives. Sweet but flaky Luna (Grace Brennan) flits from topic to topic in a frantic dance to charm. Theater geek Blue (Maaike Laanstra-Corn) is busy writing a musical for herself to perform at school called “Untitled Mansion Island Purple House Project.” Olivia (Renée-Nicole Powell) and Esther (Lark White) are sisters from Ohio; they lost another sister in a car crash related, we eventually intuit, to Olivia driving while texting. The boys are somewhat less clearly defined. Gideon (Dominic Cross) is the normie cutie distressed when his stuffed dinosaur goes missing. Mama’s boy Bard (Arjun Athalye) is mistakenly called “Brad” by everyone, but he’s too accommodating to correct them. Lastly there’s 22-year-old grief camp alum now counselor Cade (Jack DiFalco), who bunks with the kids but maintains boundaries with them. This becomes especially difficult when Olivia begins a flirtatious dance with Cade, telling him that he keeps reiterating the fact that’s she seventeen because it turns him on. Cade seems to spend an inordinate amount of time jogging and possibly masturbating in the bathroom. We don’t really find out.
Luna is a source of much delicious whimsy: She wonders if her perennial Halloween costume of a carrot will have to be a “sexy carrot” when she gets older. When she locates one of her nail clippings, she raises it on high for everyone to beg favors of the “Toenail God.” Even loopier are the dramaturgical quandaries of Blue, who includes lines from her therapist in a monologue delivered by the ocean. Smith ekes out information about each back story slowly and in understated, sidewise fashion, via throwaway bits of conversation, smuggled in crosstalk, never in hysterical breakdowns about drowning in guilt or wanting to end it all. As audience members, we have to lean in and listen closely between the lines.
It’s a remarkably lived-in play. You have the sense that Smith built her world in granular detail, establishing a hefty biography for each camper, tracking everyone’s location at all times over the 15-day span of the action. The design enhances this sense of place and the lazy, dreamy passing of time. First and most obviously there’s Louisa Thompson’s cozy and cluttered cabin dotted with box fans, bunk beds, pennants on the wall and clothes heaped everywhere. Oana Botez mismatches and heaps up that colorful apparel with playful style. Incredibly articulate and subtle sunlight filters in thanks to Isabella Byrd. And Bray Poor crafts an array of indoor sound effects, such as the tinny speaker, and outdoor thunder and rainfall. Grief Camp is a banquet of perfectly meshed design, fully inhabited by the lovable, convincing cast.
A Gen X friend who teaches acting in college recently told me her students are more fragile than we were, but they protect each other’s feelings. Students are ready to call out bullying or sexual harassment or use therapy jargon unironically (in Grief Camp, they form a “massage train”). I’ve noticed this reflexive empathy of youngsters depicted in recent work like John Proctor is the Villain, where schoolkids may suffer from chaotic inner lives, but they have each other’s back—particularly women. Same’s true in Grief Camp. There’s sexual tension between Olivia and the older Cade, but it never becomes groomerish. There’s bitchiness and gossip, but no one attacks or plots to hurt anyone. The most violence happens to a green stuffed dinosaur named Ralphie. In my day, tortured adolescents would seethe in Oedipal rage, explode with lust, destroy property. Now they fret over their Duolingo streak or compare the attendance fee of grief camp to horse camp. (For the record, John Proctor has a reference to “horse therapy” so this is nearly a trend.)
These wise-child heroes sure are a vibe. Is there drama in their vibe? All the tragedies occurred before the play even began. That leaves us with six bereaved minors who just want to be kids again. Smith and Waters force no catharsis or moral lessons on us, just two weeks at camp with weirdos living with death. No cutting, no bulimia, no suicide in the last ten minutes. I felt glad to be in the presence of such a thoughtful and free-spirited writer, who, in taking great care with her characters’ feelings, respects ours.
Grief Camp | 1hr 40mins. No intermission. | Atlantic Theater Company | 330 West 20th Street | 646-452-2220 | Buy Tickets Here
