Theater Review: 13 at LA's Mark Taper Forum

If you've seen that rather naughty and even nasty 2003 movie, Thirteen, you've seen how director/writer Catherine Hardwicke, along with star Nikki Reed, imagine early teens: drugs, sex and a few piercings. Yet the world premiere musical at LA's Mark Taper Forum, revisits a more innocent and perhaps total fantasy world that is purely G-rated. The most the popular boy, Eddie (Christian Vandal - his own Web site indicates he's 15), lusts only for a French kiss from the beautiful, blonde Kendra (Emma Degerstedt, 14).

You wonder who the true audience is for this cheery, upbeat musical. It stars a cast of all unknowns who, the program lets us know without a doubt, are young teens. Not one was over the age of 15 when the program was published. Even the band is a crew of young teens, or least young looking.

The theme song, "Thirteen!" by Jason Robert Brown, who handled both music and lyrics, will mindlessly play in your head, although I can only remember the refrain "thirteen" and nothing more.

Set in Appleton, Indiana, this musical centers around a young boy whose parents have divorced and his mother moves him away from the cool, urban NYC to a hick town. Nothing as cool as Footloose happens here, although surely one of these actors has some connection with Kevin Bacon. In Footloose, Bacon played a senior in high school who danced.

Here we have Evan (Ricky Ashley). He is worried about not being popular, being labeled a geek (what happened to the geek cool of techno superiority?), and having no one come to his bar mitzvah. Yes, that's right. All the angst here is over the important party of a Jewish boy.

Dan Elish (book) has written in some other subplots so we can wrap things up with a few morals. We have the pretty girl's best friend, Lucy (Caitlin Baunoch, an eighth grader - do your own math), jealous of her friend's attempts to become football hero Eddie's girl - a deal sealed with a French kiss. Archie (Tyler Mann, also an eighth grader), is a physically disabled child on crutches with a crush on, of course, Kendra. Patrice (Sara Neimietz - no age, but a MySpace blogger) is the summer friend who Evan dumps in order to be cool.

Article Author: Purple Tigress

Former theater critic for the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Times . For the last five years, an editing slave at a dot-com but recently laid off. Currently an under-employed freelance writer and artist.

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