By Joel Elkins

When do we really grow up? At exactly what point do we go from being care-free teenagers to being care-ful adults? From being anti-establishment to being the establishment? And what causes this metamorphosis? Inevitably, every generation undergoes it, so the catalyst must surely be a universal one. Just how universal, playwright Ken Urban takes to its logical and comical extreme in Nibbler, now playing at the Theatre of N.O.T.E.

The play starts off a la Our Town, with Adam, the protagonist and narrator, taking us on a very unromantic tour of his hometown, Medford, in suburban New Jersey, back to the days of his youth. Specifically, back to the summer just after graduation from high school, when people (well, most people) see nothing but endless possibilities. Adam only sees the fast approaching dissolution of his tight-knit group of high school friends, the only thing that has made that time and place bearable.

As the group pass the time at their favorite coffee shop, we are meant to see just how tight-knit they are, arguing about nonsense as if it were important and calling each other names without any repercussions. And we are meant to pine for those simpler days, when we never appreciated how good we had it, when we thought it would always be that simple, we would always stay young, and we would never, ever turn into our parents.

Just when the audience thinks it is going to be watching a gen-x adaptation of Diner, the play takes a sharp detour through the Twilight Zone. As the group gathers for some late-night drinking at a local park, they hear strange noises and see strange lights in the distance. Reminiscent of a bad 50’s sci-fi movie, one by one, each teenager is attacked by a strange homarine (i.e., lobsterlike) extra-terrestrial. They are forever changed, transformed overnight into different people, excited about politics, eager to join the work force, certain who they are and what they want out of life. In short, adults. And, thus, the mystery of the metamorphosis is solved.

Although the idea is interesting, the script leaves it unsatisfyingly underdeveloped. The dialogue seems awfully and needlessly contrived, the direction is clumsy and the acting, with one notable exception, does little to make one forget one is just watching a performance of 20-somethings pretending to be teenagers. Rick Steadman as Matt, Alana Dietze as Hayley, Joanie Ellen as Tara, and Ron Morehuose as Pete all move through their lines as if in a hurry to get somewhere, and to be honest, made me want to also. Darrett is fairly good as Officer Dan, the sole non-teenager role. But Nicholas S. Williams, as Adam, seems plucked from another production (or perhaps another planet?). His character is just more developed, more believable and way more sympathetic than the others. He drew me in almost from the beginning, made me forget at times that he was reading someone else’s words and actually made me care about his character.

At the Q&A after the performance, I asked the playwright which character he most identified with, fully expecting him to say Adam, the rest of the roles being caricatures or vague recollections of his old friends. That would explain why Adam emerges as the most sympathetic and real character, wondering why his life is such a mess while all his friends seem to have gotten theirs in miraculous order. However, Mr. Urban seemed a bit surprised by my question and could not, or would not, pick one character over another.

So perhaps this is simply a testament to the power of good acting, the ability of one performer to take the same script, direction and production company and yet carve out a more interesting, more nuanced and more engaging character, on interpretation alone.

Director Mark Seldis and set designer Maureen Weiss opted for a minimalist stage, using one simple tiered structure for virtually all the scenery, converting it from a table at a diner to bleachers at the neighborhood park to the walls of an abandoned house. Kimberly Freed designed the costumes, Cricket S. Myers designed the sound (including a live musical number at the end) and Chris Wojcieszyn designed the lights (which, for my taste, might have benefited from a slightly darker, eerier mood during the alien attack scenes).

Nibbler is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm through December 12, 2009.

Theatre of NOTE is located at 1517 N. Cahuenga, in Hollywood, just north of Sunset.

Ticket prices: $22.00 (Seniors, Students: $18.00)

Reservations online at www.theatreofnote.com or by phone at (323) 856-8611.