STAGE REVIEW : ‘Class of 1990’: Teens in Trouble at Art Theatre

The high school seniors in “The Class of 1990” are in big trouble at the Los Angeles Art Theatre. Don Gibble’s series of monologues puts them through pregnancy, drug overdoses, physical and emotional abuse and psychosis.

Take Tony, played by Gibble. He tells us his father cheated with a secretary; she wouldn’t accept his ending the affair (shades of “Fatal Attraction”) so she shot Dad and Mom and herself--in front of Tony.

He took to drugs and alcohol, joined a gang and ended up in the hospital. A nurse took him home with her and turned his life around.

The 20-year-old playwright wants to convey a sense of the pressures teens face growing up today. But overkill, and a lack of any real connection between the characters, gives the monologues the coloration of overwrought student auditions.

The one exception is a sensitive portrait of a pregnant, scared teen-ager (Kelly Stone), pathetically desperate to give her baby the love and understanding she was denied by her own parents. The mostly teen cast is fine; Gibble needs to simplify, connect and deliver his worthy messages with emotional truth, not emotional excess.