HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH  

'Jr. High': Growing Up Is Murder
The kids aren't all right in stunning account of a real killing

IN THIS FIERCE, DISTURBING LAMENT for the death of childhood, the characters hardly change. But the audience does. Six junior-high-school kids remain, through terrible events, suspended in a moral vacuum. We, however, move from open laughter to uncomfortable giggling to deep, dark silence.
Scott Elliott's gripping production of Rob Urbinati's first play takes us, literally, onto the terrain of youth. It is staged in the auditorium of a Manhattan intermediate school. The actors, ages 14 to 22, convincingly create characters who are even younger. But the action is as far from sweetness and innocence as it is possible to go.
The play is based on a real case in Indiana in 1992, when a 12-year-old girl was killed by some older schoolmates because she had developed a lesbian relationship with the girlfriend of one of them. Though the play retains a deadpan documentary feel, withholding judgments and explanations until near the end, it is very much a dramatic artifice. Urbinati immerses us in the girls' world. He sweeps us into the warped logic by which a lunchroom tiff escalates into a dreadful crime.

And this logic is stitched into dialogue where perspective and proportion are scarily absent The play is initially funny in the way the girls switch casually from the lurid to the banal, from "Carrie" to "Clueless." A typical exchange: "Does she really drink her own blood?" "Yeah, but she has a car."
Urbinati creates a mental jungle in which vampires and cuddly toys, Pentecostal visions and Kmart are tangled together. Slowly these juxtapositions lose their humor and become an angry, insistent protest at the failure of the adult world to provide these kids with a way through.
By the time one of the girls says "I'm gonna hate myself for this later" - referring, not to the murder in which she has just participated, but to some food she has just eaten at McDonald's — the laughter has been replaced by the pain of damaged, disordered lives.
This is deft and morally serious-writing, never exploitative and ultimately full of pity. And it is perfectly realized by Elliott and his brilliant cast Chloe Sevigny ("Kids," "Palmetto"), making her stage debut, gives a vivid account of hurt breeding hatred. Stephanie Gatchett just 14, creates a victim who is never merely passive. Everywhere, there is the kind of precision and care that such a subject demands.

The performances are so truthful, in fact, that by the time we are given a glimpse into the cruelty that created these dangerous children, we already have a good sense of what lies beneath the surface.

Fintan O’Toole, New York Daily News

Mr. Urbinati’s script is based on court testimony and psychological and police reports. Even in the era of Jeffrey Dahlmer and Susan Smith, the story holds its own grotesquerie; you can see why Mr. Urbinati was hooked by it. It takes the absolutely ordinary subject of teenage rivalry and revenge pranks, gives it an exotic lesbian twist and then pushes it to the outer limits of sociopathic behavior. Mr. Elliott, Mr. Urbinati and the cast do nicely in conveying the solemn earnestness of young love and social warfare.

Ben Brantley, New York Times

HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH is a blistering piece of drama that’s conceived and presented in cinematic terms. It’s multiple scenes and locations flow into each other without a break, building a considerable I-can’t-believe-I’m watching-this steam as Urbinati’s story veers from puppy-dog lesbian romance toward brutal slaughter. The horror of it all is seriocomically underscored by the typical banalities of teen existence while songs by Mariah Carey and 1990’s girl groups pulse through the air. If you go, better hang on tight--it’s a wicked midnight ride with the rising generation and definitely not a show for the squeamish.

Michael Sommers, Star-Ledger

HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH  is solidly written, thoroughly absorbing and the setting of an actual school adds a dose of reality. The events that lead to a tragic and bloodcurdling climax are quixotic, funny, stupid and sad. The girls love one minute and hate the next. They talk big and make outrageous plans. They dream and scheme. And they let things get terribly out of hand. The result of Mr. Elliott and Mr. Urbinati’s unflinching honesty is a truly unsettling experience in the theatre. The performances of the six young actresses are, without exception, the most vivid of the current Off-Broadway season.

Larry Ledford, At Your Leisure

Mr. Urbinati has written this in a combination of documentary and dramatic style, effectively capturing the banality, the provincialism and the simple-mindedness of the girls and their cruelty. While he makes some gestures in the direction of psychological explanation, the overall effect--undoubtably intentional--is the frightful ordinariness of these teen-agers. Even as they stumble toward savagery, they play their boom boxes, eat at McDonald’s, hang out at the mall and gossip about social life. For a debut playwright, Mr. Urbinati has build his 90-minute, intermissionless play with smoothness, alternating addresses to the audience with interplayed scenes, and his characters are sufficiently different for the cast of talented actresses to delineate them believably. Also, Mr. Elliott’s “site-specific” staging--in the auditorium of a real high school--lends the production a vivid realism.  

Martin Gottfried, New York Law Journal

The play draws its early humor--and later, its pathos--from the contrast between word and deed. These girls have grown up faster than they can comprehend, and they talk about adult desires and problems in the language of junior high school. Many laughs are derived from the irony of early sexual bloomers passing notes in class, exchanging panda rings, and writing each other’s names on their folders. The energetic cast creates a convincing portrait of the cliquey, intense relationships between junior high school girls.

Ben Williams, City Search

As the sweetness of teen-age girl tribadism gives way to affectless violence right out a Quentin Tarantino movie, the audience gets progressively sickened and outraged. But this isn’t just another lurid male fantasy about murderous muff-divers. What makes it compelling is that it’s true. The production forces us to look beyond cliches to the messier realities of gender rebellion and the brutal consequences on both gay and straight kids of a culture that feeds them nothing but junk.

Don Shewey, The Advocate

Whether the girls are hanging around their lockers or threatening Shanda with a kitchen knife, they sound as though they were shopping for blue jeans at the mall. Spoken without affect, the cruelest comments become funny and by being funny, become doubly chilling.

Alexis Greene, In Theatre

A cautionary tale about what can happen to young people raised without a moral compass. Author Rob Urbinati captures the language and rhythms of teenage girls.

Christopher Byrne, Lesbian and Gay New York

The docudrama scenes are quite affecting, especially when each girl finally takes us back to the beginning of the non-childhood that led to this play’s unhappy end.

Elyse Sommer, Curtain Up

This lurid, spine-chilling play will remind you of the bullies and weirdos from your own junior high school days.

Leah Sydney, Culture Finder Tribune

The horror of the events is offset in dark comic fashion by the banal dialogue of these teenage girls.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

The actresses convincingly convey a mixed-up world as they confuse the meaningful and the meaningless.

Jane Hogan, Backstage

A cross between “The Craft,” “Foxes” and “Heathers,” Hazelwood Jr. High is eerie and fun.

Karen Mancuso, HX for Her

Urbinati has an ear for absurd teen-speak.

Greg Evans, Variety

Hazelwood Jr. High maintains tension and a sense of horrified fascination.

Mary Campbell, Associated Press