Red Turnip stages a youth quake

Red Turnip Theater has done it again.

Fresh from the success of their third-season opener, 33 Variations, the theater company has just debuted its “RT 0.5 Series” — smaller-scale productions in much more intimate spaces (in this case, the 80-seat A Space across Greenbelt 5), a more casual setting (bean bags strewn across the floor) and lower-priced tickets (40-percent cheaper), which should be good news for students and theater buffs alike.

It’s Red Turnip in “low-budget” mode, but lest you worry that anything is lost in the production, fear not. Red Turnip badges of pride like free-flowing alcohol are roundly encouraged, and yes, you can bring your drink (or five) into the theater.

Another Red Turnip badge of honor is the well-chosen straight play. This time director Topper Fabregas and co-Turnip Jenny Jamora selected one of their longtime holy grails, This Is Our Youth, Pulitzer Prize nominee Kenneth Lonergan’s two-act play about three disaffected youths in New York City.

All the action takes place in the oldest character’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Dennis Ziegler, portrayed by Jef Flores from The Normal Heart, is 21 and playing at being an adult, despite the fact that his dad pays the rent on his apartment.

Dennis is the kind of golden boy all the girls probably had crushes on in high school — charismatic, a natural leader, but arrogant in the way that handsome boys who know they’re handsome are.

His weekend is disrupted by buddy Warren Straub (multi-awarded actor Nicco Manalo), 19, his Charlie Brown-ish opposite: sensitive, beaten on by his father, awkward around girls, with his head stuck firmly in the clouds. His most prized possession is a vintage toaster from the 1950s.

Faceoff: Jef Flores, who plays Dennis, and Manalo act up a storm playing disaffected youths in 1980s New York City.

Warren plops a backpack full of money stolen from his lingerie-tycoon father — about $15,000 worth — in front of Dennis, and this tantalizing dilemma — if you won the lottery (or stole $15k from your father), what would you do with all that money? — is the spark that ignites the play.

Dennis, the more enterprising of the two (“I’m twice the Jew you’ll ever be. I’m like a Jewish god. I’m like — Jew-lius Caesar!”) decides to buy and sell drugs at a profit. The more retiring Warren is content to let his alpha-male pal take the lead; he’s more interested in getting closer to Jessica (Cindy Lopez), a 19-year-old fashion student he has the hots for.

In true Turnip theater-in-the-round fashion, we’re not just close to the action; we’re in the thick of it this time, sprawled on beanbags that could be part of the décor of Dennis’ room. When the two tussle on the bed in a fight, we feel like voyeurs witnessing a homoerotic lap dance, and we’re not 100-percent-safe from flying props like footballs, either, but this is undoubtedly theater at its most immersive.

Flores tackles his role with such relish, ferocity and brilliance you can’t help but think, “This guy was born to play Dennis,” no small praise for a role that’s been essayed by the likes of Matt Damon, Hayden Christensen and Michael Cera.

His comic bravado reminded me at times of the character Erlich Bachman from Silicon Valley, and the way he handles a 15-minute monologue towards the end of the play is so spot-on it’s uncanny. Dennis is a hipster long before hipsters came into fashion (the play is set in 1982), and just as aggravating about his hipster-ishness: “I’m like the basis of half your personality,” he sneers at Warren. “All you do is imitate me. I turned you onto The Honeymooners, Frank Zappa, Ernst Lubitsch, boxer shorts, — sushi. I’m like a one-man youth culture for you pathetic a**holes.”

Manalo, a theater actor who’s been making his mark in both TV and films — he won the Cinemalaya and Star Awards for his supporting turn in the movie The Janitor — is every bit his equal, and then some. One could argue he has the more difficult role as Lonergan’s loser-ish alter ego because he has to keep everything bottled up and simmering underneath.

During the Q&A afterward Fabregas said he instructed his actors not to let everything hang out there, as he wanted an emotional undercurrent running throughout the entire play, and Manalo is a prime example of this. Even when he’s just standing there absorbing one of Dennis’ rants or Jessica’s arguments there’s not a moment you’ll catch him not listening as Warren, and it’s in these moments of stillness that the true worth of this actor emerges.

In this bizarre love triangle it’s Jessica who ends up being the third wheel, but that’s not to detract from Lopez, a Tanghalang Ateneo actress and Cosmo editor who gamely joins the fray. She ably captures all the vulnerabilities and awkwardness of a 19-year-old girl groping towards a more adult identity; it’s just difficult matching the power of the two more veteran actors onstage.

That Fabregas, who debuted as a director with Red Turnip’s Rabbit Hole last year, makes this comedy about Jewish teens in Reagan-era America relatable to Pinoys (the audience at the press preview got nearly every joke and snarky aside in Lonergan’s script), is a testament to his directing chops and keen love, understanding of and insight into the play.

He told me that his take on This Is Our Youth was completely new — unadulterated by viewings of any previous production, and this is a marvel considering that he got his actors so fully into the skin of rich young Jewish Americans, with no wavering accents to boot, and made a culture seemingly so alien on the surface come alive in the midst of Makati.

Just because RT’s 0.5 series is lower budget doesn’t mean its ambitions are any less small. The company — which will alternate between bigger-scale shows and intimate dramas like This Is Our Youth to save money and make theater more accessible to the public — has gone from strength to strength, from its debut production of Closer to its latest staging of 33 Variations, from drama to comedy to tragedy and back again.

This Is Our Youth is one of the comedies. And it’s so brilliantly acted and staged that even if Dennis’, Warren’s and Jessica’s youth wasn’t exactly our youth, it sure felt like it was.

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This Is Our Youth runs at A Space Gallery on the 5th floor, 110 Legazpi St., Makati, on Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 21 and 22 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are P900 each with a free drink, available at http://redturniptheater.wix.com/, the Red Turnip Theater page on Facebook or redturniptheater@gmail.com.