Off The Grid’s “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” – Takes Teen Angst to New Levels

by Mike Hoban

Our Dear Dead Drug Lord – Written by Alexis Scheer. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Scenic Design: Kristin Loeffler; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Costume Design: Rachel Padula; Sound Design: Julian Crocamo. Presented by Off the Grid Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Calderwood Pavilion, Roberts Studio Theatre, 527 Tremont St. Boston, through September 1

It’s 2008, right before the historic presidential election, and four teen girls are convening in the childhood treehouse belonging to Pipe, the apparent ringleader of the group. But they’re not there to play music, smoke cigarettes (or weed) and talk about boys/girls. They’ve clearly got something more important on their minds. So as one of the girls unfurls a poster to hang on the wall – not one of the Jonas Brothers, mind you, but a mugshot of deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar – and another exclaims, “Oh my God, I want to turn this poster into a blanket and lose my virginity on it,” you suspect it’s about to get a whole lot weirder than an “Afterschool Special”. And when the girls anoint themselves with the blood of a small, freshly killed creature as part of a ritual to commune with the spirit of Escobar – those suspicions are pretty much confirmed.

That’s the opening scene to Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, a workshop production now being presented by Off The Grid Theatre, which last year explored similar themes of young women, politics and magic with “The Weird”. Written with assurance by OTG’s artistic director Alexis Scheer, the play explores a darker side of teen girlhood that goes way beyond cutting. And by setting it against the backdrop of typical teen banter about pop culture, school work, and sexual and relationship misadventures, the sinister undercurrent becomes imperceptibly muted as the teens move toward executing their twisted scheme.

(Gina Fonseca, Khloe Alice Lin)

Set in Miami, the girls attend a private school where they are members of the Dead Leaders Club, a school sponsored activity that allows the students to study and do a presentation on historic figures, hence their fascination with Escobar.  But given that the previous year’s “leader” was Joseph Stalin, it’s hard not to notice that ruthlessness seems to be a quality that the group finds attractive in their subjects. The girls – Pipe, Squeeze and Zoom, who had their names chosen for them via a Oujia board – have lured a new student, “Kit”, to join their ranks. Following a somewhat disturbing version of a “Mean Girls” hazing for the new club member, the girls conduct a ceremonial rite that may have actually summoned the life force of Escobar, and in the process revealed the “true” identity of their newest recruit, laying the foundation for a titillating narrative.

What makes the play so intriguing is that we’re never sure if the end game for the girls is serious or if they’re just pushing boundaries as a kind of thrill-seeking exercise. Scheer does a good job of creating well-drawn and believable characters that, although recognizable, avoid slipping into caricature: Pipe (Gina Fonseca) is a Young Republican (it’s 2008, so it’s not today’s right wing extremist-dominated party) with a cruel streak, but has conflicting sexual feelings that may not fit in  well with her conservative family’s beliefs; Squeeze (Khloe Alice Lin) is her liberal opposite, peppering her conversations about school goings-on with well-meaning but dogmatic progressive rhetoric; Zoom (Lisa Joyce), the youngest of the bunch, is a hearing-impaired, performance-shy singer who may or may not be a virgin; and Kit (Tatiana Gil) is a Colombian-born American citizen with a mysterious past who, despite being the new kid on the block, refuses to accept a diminished role in the gang’s pecking order.

(Lisa Joyce, Fonseca, Tatiana Gil, Lin)

Director Rebecca Bradshaw elicits terrific performances from the talented cast, paces the piece beautifully, and keeps the multiple storylines from getting too tangled up. Scheer has a well-tuned ear for dialogue, which is as funny as it is ominous, and millennials will no doubt appreciate the pop culture references to their own teen years. Some of the plot points seem a bit extraneous or don’t quite mesh together as well one would hope, but the play is still in its workshop phase and these minor quibbles don’t detract much from the overall work. The ending was also a bit perplexing, but as they say, the joy is in the journey, and Scheer has definitely established herself as a playwright to watch with this effort, so it’s well worth a look. For tickets and more information, go to: http://www.offthegridtheatre.com/