Fourteen-year-old Nick (Matthew Stadelmann) in Carlos Murillo's stunning Dark Play, Or Stories for Boys, the second offering in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, believes he can wriggle out of any sticky situation that arises from his Internet addiction. That's because he has "the dexterity of a sharp-thinking, comic-book hero," he boasts. But the online stories he concocts to manipulate the lives of others and satisfy his burgeoning sexual appetite lead him into dark and dangerous territory.
"I make shit up," Nick tells the audience. "I make shit up all the time, partly cause I like making shit up, partly because I'm good at it, and partly cause, well, I can."
When he comes across an online profile of 16-year-old Adam (Will Rogers) with "I want to fall in love" as its first six words, Nick is thunderstruck. He has never met anyone his age who sincerely expressed a need for love. Adam writes that he wants to fall in love with a girl 15-to-8 with green eyes, dirty blonde hair and other qualities he details. Noted by Nick, these are all picked up and made part of the fictional Rachel that Nick invents to seduce Adam with chat-room talk that eventually gets him to turn his web cam on himself and masturbate for Rachel/Nick.
Devious Nick consistently maneuvers to keep his plan alive and possess Adam as his own. Adam, meanwhile, increasingly demands a face-to-face meeting with Rachel, whom he says he loves.
Playwright Murillo is ingenious in crafting the surprising twists and turns that Nick's nefarious scheme takes. Stadelmann and Rogers are superb as Nick and Adam. Three actors playing other roles—Liz Morton as Molly/Rachel, Lon Sumrall as Male Netizen, and Jennifer Mendenhall as Female Netizen, are first-rate, too. Morton's Rachel, interacting with Adam as Nick's alter ego, expertly conveys the banality of web teen talk with her inflections and expressions. Sumrall is fierce and menacing as the abusive stepfather Nick invents for Rachel and hilarious as an adolescent girl who obsesses over Adam's online profile. Mendenhall is magnificent as a cliché-spouting, self-important theater arts instructor, as Nick's bewildered mother, and as a tough detective with the Special Victims Unit of the New York City Police Department.
Excitingly directed by Michael John Garces, Murillo's witty, fast-moving examination of a cultural phenomenon is well served by scenic designer Michael B. Raiford's stripped-down set, Lorraine Venberg's on-the-mark costumes, sounds designed by Matt Callahan, and snippets from Adam's webcam courtesy of video designer Jason Czaja.
