STAGE REVIEW : A Deep Look Into Children of the ‘60s

UC Irvine is a fitting place to find “Moonchildren.”

Michael Weller’s 1970 play about students from the mid-’60s draws us back to when colleges served as laboratories for iconoclastic ideas and socially responsible attitudes. It reminds us that the campus is still one of the best places to invent ourselves (even as it makes us wonder whether most universities--with their current surplus of business and economics majors--are still the locus for such soul-searching).

Not that the eight students who live together in “Moonchildren” are necessarily committed radicals. An anti-war march can be as much an opportunity for the guys to pick up “left-wing chicks” as a statement against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

Still, these are thoughtful kids who feel the currents of change all around them and are anxious to take part; they are not always sure how to react, but they have got their ears turned in the right direction to find out just how the times are a-changing. Their social/political lives are not as important as their personal lives, but they are close.

The two merge drastically for Bob (Nicholas Johnson): All abstract notions about the Vietnam War are distilled the day his draft notice arrives. Unable to adjust and preoccupied by a sinking relationship with the spirited Kathy (Wendy Abas), he announces to his friends that it doesn’t make any difference: He’s already “dead.”

It is a grandly self-involved declaration--and one that shows the strengths of Weller’s writing. In that simple scene, he communicates the indulgence that often goes along with personal exploration, and that certainly was a facet of the consciousness-raising of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Weller lets us know that despite all their good intentions and passion, these are still immature kids with some growing up to do.

Never is this more clear than with Norman, Mike and Cootie. Norman (Philip Thompson) is a bookish math student and son of a police chief. After he is chided for not being relevant (this crowd’s buzzword), he immerses himself in Asian literature and starts protesting at the rallies. It doesn’t take long for him to decide to immolate himself as a statement against the war, just like the Buddhist monks he has seen on TV.

The group’s jesters, Mike (Stephen Pierce Cox) and Cootie (Rex Slate) don’t really believe Norman will go through with it, and meanwhile--in spite of the peace symbols, headbands and rhetoric--they see Norman’s predicament more as an opportunity for laughs than anything else. They will feel guilty about it later, but right now, hey, it’s fun.

A cast actually made up of college students makes all this especially palpable and lends the drama an added layer of poignancy, even truthfulness. There are moments when the cast shows it is relatively green itself, but they are few: Most of the performers are talented and disciplined. Asgeir Sigurvaldason’s direction is steady, and Bethanne Doyle’s hand-me-down set and Matthew LeFebvre’s bell-bottomed, mini-skirted costumes help transport us back 20 years. The televised segments of war newscasts are graphic and moving, as are the time-tripping tunes, from Dylan to the Stones.

Weller was able to keep “Moonchildren” from being just a surface evocation of the idealistic ‘60s, a campus “Woodstock” made of beads and period homilies; it is more than just a curious look at a distant time. These are real kids with real aspirations and, as an older character says at one point, the power to change the world. That’s a responsibility that shouldn’t be forgotten.

‘MOONCHILDREN’

A UC Irvine production of Michael Weller’s drama. Directed by Asgeir Sigurvaldason. With Stephen Pierce Cox, Jill K. Tanner, Rex Slate, Philip Thompson, Ken Perkins, Wendy Abas, Nicholas Johnson, Eileen Starke, Elie Goretsky, Joe Batte, Robert Vaughn, Nicholas Dierman and Steve Wagner. Sets by Bethanne Doyle. Costumes by Matthew LeFebvre. Lighting by Leslie Barry. Plays tonight at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the campus’s Fine Arts Studio Theatre. Tickets: $4 to $6. (714) 856-5000.