Cadence Rush Quibell, Christopher Imbrosciano, Jennifer Lines, and Marco Walker-Ng in Teenage Dick
(Photo by Moonrider Productions)
Although it contains things to admire, this production of Teenage Dick feels too much like an afterschool special or not great theatre for young people.
Teenage Dick is playwright Mike Lew’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s Richard III as a high school drama. Shakespeare’s Richard is a murderously ambitious “bunch-backed toad.” (The historical figure’s recently discovered bones testify he probably had scoliosis.) In Lew’s retelling, the junior class secretary, seventeen-year-old Richard Gloucester, who has cerebral palsy, has his eye on the “throne” of the school presidency. A hated outcast by his own account, Richard sets out to improve his social standing — and chances of election — by dating Anne Margaret, who used to go out with Eddie, the stereotypically dim-witted football player and current president, who bullies Richard. [Read more…]
