Admissions. The word has two accepted definitions. One is “a statement acknowledging the truth of something”. The second is “the process or fact of entering or being allowed to enter a place, organization, or institution”. The Joshua Harmon play by that name, at the Rep Studio, uses both senses of the word, although it’s quickly apparent that the second is what leads us into the play.
Hillcrest is a very selective prep school in New Hampshire, the sort with headmasters and immense tuition. The admissions office is helmed by Sherri Rosen-Mason (Henny Russell), who’s worked hard over the years to bring the percentage of minority students up. She’s married to the headmaster, Bill Mason (R. Howard Duffy). Their son Charlie (Thom Niemann), is waiting to hear about early acceptance from Yale. So is his best friend Perry, whom we never see. His mom Ginnie (Kate Udall), Sherri’s friend, is married to a Hillcrest teacher, also unseen, who is biracial.
Perry’s admitted to Yale. Charlie is deferred, which means, in effect, “Well, maybe; we’ll look at your application again later”, pretty much a “no”. The distraught Charlie lets loose a screed about diversity and inclusion that certainly asks some interesting questions. His mother, when she can get a word in edgewise, tries to explain – not, we assume, that the young gentleman hasn’t heard these same words at the dinner table for many years. He’s an angry white kid who isn’t getting into the school he felt he should. (Ah, should – a word that can be fraught with danger whether onstage or off.) His dad, when the young one half-runs out of steam, erupts, calling Charlie a “privileged brat”, among other things, saying that he can go to, oh, Dartmouth or Brown, his safety schools.
The discrimination they’ve worked so hard to erase at the prep school has now – and, yes, it almost certainly is the case, from the script – bitten their only child in the wazoo. The couple had deliberately gone to work at Hillcrest in order to have free tuition for him so that he could have the best of all that 1% world offered, and now this. What to do? Principles versus protective parenting.
Steven Woolf directed the play, which is excellently paced, the characters clearly drawn. Russell’s Sherri opens as a woman devoted to doing her job superbly, dealing with an underling played by Barbara Kingsley in a delightful turn. The change from say-the-right-thing to Mamma Bear is an interesting one. Duffy’s dad is strong and enjoyable, a believable character. As the son, Niemann, even in his anger, is a little too controlled, although one’s never sure if that’s a directorial decision or the actor working. Udall’s Ginnie, the friend and other mom, shows her unsureness with considerable skill.
The script really brings points of the argument – on both sides – forward to be considered, and that’s an important thing. It’s difficult to do something like this without preaching, and the rant from Charlie is noticeably too articulate and well-thought-out for an angry adolescent. It also feels too long.
The play is also terrifically classist. That’s hard to avoid when you’re writing about elites, certainly. It was the frequent haranguing about community colleges that grated most. Implicit stereotypes, racial, educational, social – all seemed to add up as the two-year institutions being worthless substitutes for actual learning, catering to the unworthy unwashed.
Harmon’s previous work, like Bad Jews, uses humor to get at things, and there are a lot of laughs in this show. But certainly some of it has a tinge of discomfort to it. And that’s quite proper.
Admissions
through November 11
Studio Theatre
Repertory Theatre St. Louis
Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts
130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves
Comments