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.