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Speech & Debate

Media Reviews

Speech & Debate dramatizes high school witch hunt
05/04/2009
Theatre in the Square's Speech & Debate depicts high schoolers in Salem, Ore., who frequently draw comparisons to the Salem, Mass., witch hunts when they discuss censorship or other forms of public persecution. In real life, America's teens in towns named Salem doubtless play that overly dramatic card every chance they get, too.

Speech & Debate playwright Stephen Karam appreciates the complexities of the teenage experience, and the many ways young people can be at once wise and naļve, experienced and immature. Karam knows how kids interact in an age of Googling and instant messaging. Speech & Debate has the promising premise of a high school sex scandal juxtaposed with a laughable, musical version of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. The script proves surprisingly convoluted, however, and the production at Theatre in the Square's Alley Stage, directed by Clint Thornton, struggles to keep it clear. Speech & Debate feels like a play caught in that adolescent awkward stage.

Three students begin the play as strangers but gradually become unlikely friends, almost reminiscent of The Breakfast Club. Howie (Jeremy Ledbetter), who's been openly gay since age 10, cruises the Internet for possible hook-ups. School reporter Solomon (Nick Arapoglou) strives to write controversial stories but butts against the opposition of school authority figures. Theater geek Diwata (Maria Sager) vents on her live, musical podcasts that the drama teacher doesn't appreciate her talent.

The threesome comes together with the formation of the school's new Speech & Debate team, but all in pursuit of his or her own agenda. None of the characters turns out to be particularly interested in debate, not even Katherine Nora LeRoy as a grown-up reporter who writes about them. Even the playwright doesn't seem to care much about debate. Though Karam's script nods to that irony, the play's insistence on the debate team plot point and its use of forensic terminology makes the action more complicated than it needs to be. Speech & Debate also tends to throw out more ideas than it knows what to do with, including an unplanned pregnancy.

With her kooky behavior and self-aggrandizing speeches, Diwata resembles one of the adolescent comic creations of Gilda Radner or Lily Tomlin, but Sager's madcap comedy seems out of sync with the other roles' more realistic approaches. At the heart of the play, Arapoglou affectingly plays a young man tied in knots by school pressures, personal ambitions, and deeply suppressed secrets. In a play marked by unfocused arguments, the persuasiveness of Arapoglou's characterization invites little debate.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Speech" a Babble of Issues, Crises
04/13/2009
Plenty of promise: Characters stand out in steamy play about high school angst, but there’s too much going on.

Let’s see. There’s a horny young gay kid cruising for sex on the Internet. A strident high school newspaper reporter who wants to bring down the mayor for having sex with underage boys. And a wildly overwrought thespian who wages war on her drama teacher after failing to get the part she wants in The Crucible.

Sounds like the makings of one hot play.

If only Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate lived up to its steamy potential. A modern-day witch hunt about a group of technologically savvy, sexually curious high school kids in Salem, Oregon, the play —- which opened Wednesday night at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square —- bubbles over with too many issues, agendas and identity crises.

Karam strains to connect the dots by having his angst-ridden teens form a speech and debate club, and their competition-style scenes provide the structure for this coming-of-age tale. But less than two years after the play’s New York run, its use of Internet chat rooms and live podcasts feels more dated than innovative.

That said, the playwright manages to create some zany, one-of-a-kind characters in geeky cub reporter Solomon (Nick Arapoglou), sexually adventurous Howie (Jeremy Ledbetter) and drama diva Diwata (Maria Sager).

Solomon’s overzealous journalism may have something to do with his own self persecution complex, and Arapoglou nails the insecurities of this nerdy Izod-wearing young man with his terrific kit of acting details. Sager’s over-the-top Diwata —- who rewrites The Crucible as a musical and worships at the altar of Idina Menzel —- is fun to watch, but the actress’ frenetic energy nearly glosses over her character’s vulnerability.

The most successful performance here is that of Ledbetter, a Kennesaw State University student who portrays the sarcastic Howie with naturalistic charm.

Karam’s premise —- a trio of adolescents masking their troubles with mind games, sexual experimentation and quirky theatrical gags —- comes across like an R-rated High School Musical. But for all its quirky charms, the play’s explosion of ideas can’t disguise the fact that it’s a wicked little mess.

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