Turning Back Time With ‘Heydays’ (Review)

by Kathryn Yu
Kathryn Yu
•
August 14, 2018
•
4 min read

Brouhaha Theatre Project leads us deep into Prospect Park into a coming of age story

Imagine the most ridiculous conversation you ever had with your high school friends. All of the snarky interjections, crude jokes, rude gestures, and curse words. Think of all of your inane philosophizing, but trapped in amber. Now take that conversation, transcribe it with care, pore over it with obsessive detail, and etch it in stone as a sacred text. Imagine this all at the hand of the one member of the friend group who still (still!) seeks full acceptance, whose obsession over the relationships that once were lends itself to an almost religious devotion.

Imagine her attempt to somehow relive these memories in a series of do-overs, as if re-enacting the actions would somehow stop the inevitable drifting away. This is the premise of Heydays, an intimate coming of age story set among the gently rolling hills and wooded glens of Propect Park in Brooklyn.

We meet our heroine (or perhaps she’s better off as an “anti-heroine”) Tucker (Hanna Allerton) at the start of the show. She is the mastermind behind the reconvening of the group’s members years later. We, the audience, are to be witnesses to the new reality they’re constructing today. But this is no Westworld. And Tucker is no “host” questioning the nature of her reality. She firmly believes that the only reality that actually matters is the one that we collectively and willingly create in our minds. Somehow, she’ll fix the past, in a grandiose act of wish fulfillment, with us as her accomplices. Her odd theories are based upon a book written by Phil (John Goodman), one of the group’s other members, who seems concerned that Tucker’s taken his abstract musings and turned them into some sort of self-help mumbo jumbo. But this is really Tucker’s party and we’re just along for the (dark) ride.

Luckily, it is all too easy to lose yourself in this strange world. Heydays aptly uses the quirks of its park setting to its advantage. A circular, banal conversation between two teenage boys seems seem to take on new life when staged in public on a park bench, as a family of four rides by on a tandem bike. And as we walk along the forested, wild paths, there are moments where it hardly feels like New York City at all.

I lose focus for a second while listening to the two exes (Leila and Tag, played by Annette Hammond and Dan Kuan Peeples, respectively) have the same argument three different ways, and suddenly find myself cut off by some unruly vegetation. In one gorgeously choreographed moment, Tag leads our small group to a bridge and motions for us to look down. Suddenly we are overlooking a pair of dancers who sprint and writhe in the valley below us: back and forth, back and forth. Throughout the evening, performers magically run off and reappear, taking full advantage of our limited lines of sight. In Prospect Park, as in life, it’s often hard to see what’s around the bend.

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The sound design also employs clever techniques to enhance the sense of being somewhere else. The use of live guitar and occasional song add a poetic effect to our collective fever dream, as the sun begins to set and the fireflies start to come out. Bits of nearby characters’ conversations float in and out of earshot, just far enough away to remain mysterious. And the judicious use of an ethereal prerecorded soundtrack intensifies the dream-like environment, bringing a cinematic quality to the looping dialogue, which is impressive for a show that’s held entirely outdoors.

And as for that singular sacred conversation? I soon find myself holding a script detailing its every moment. The text is filled with in-fighting and accusations and unexpected levity, which gets even funnier when myself and other participants of the experience are called upon to read the written lines aloud. I can hear the group next to us undergoing the same exercise, giving me the delightful experience of feeling like I’m in a surreal, angsty echo chamber. (I didn’t expect a comedy, but Heydays has some genuinely hilarious moments, which are both refreshing and greatly appreciated in a genre that tends towards seriousness.)

At the end of the day (both literally and figuratively), it seems like everyone but Tucker sees right through this flimsy excuse for a reunion and is merely indulging her — be it out of pity or kindness. And, of course, things eventually begin to go awry.

But the beauty of Heydays is that the show avoids turning into a hackneyed tale about personal growth, filled with cliched epiphanies about one’s formative years. Instead it goes the less obvious route, one which a company with a less sure hand might have flubbed. We’re treated to a thoughtful, elegant rumination on friendship, growing up, what it means to leave the past behind, and what happens when you’re the one person trying desperately to stand still, even as the world around you continues to turn.

Heydays continues through August 19 and tickets are $30; there are a very limited number of tickets remaining. Please see site for mobility and weather advisories.

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