PTC's After Ashley

The journey from self-absorption to broader insight necessarily involves pain. Justin (Peter Stadlen) is the 14-year-old son of a loveless marriage of ex-hippies, intellectually mature but emotionally immature, reluctantly pushed into the role of adult confidante to his equally childish mother, Ashley (Jennifer Rohn). When she inappropriately confides in him (“I’ve never had, like, movie sex— Swept Away!”), he empathetically suggests she share such thoughts with someone else: “You lack a fucking peer group, is the problem.” Justin’s liberal journalist father, Alden (Russ Anderson), yearns to save the world but can’t relate to his own family. When Ashley is murdered, Alden seizes on the tragedy to advance his career with a book and a TV show, leaving the embittered Justin (by now 17) to defend the truth of his mother’s pathetic legacy by publicly embarrassing his father: “I think the only way to save her is to trash her.” Julie (Tracee Chimo) is a college student whom we meet as a “victim groupie” attracted to Justin by his family tragedy (she yearns to be a writer but feels she lacks the requisite pain in her life); she evolves into his ally, buffer against his father, and ultimately the lynchpin of the play: the unlikely figure who will cure Justin's anger.
Playwright Gina Gionfriddo demonstrates a witty and tragicomic sense of the journalistic tendency to seek larger meaning in every minor personal situation, not to mention an easier and more obvious target: the readiness of media people to exploit their personal tragedies. Her intelligent script demonstrates the subtle manner in which small acts can produce huge consequences (both Alden and Justin, it develops, inadvertently contributed to Ashley’s fate). The result is a compelling and original work that’s simultaneously serious, entertaining and often very funny, with excellent performances by a six-person cast. Well worth seeing, even if the second act drags a bit and ultimately a few pieces of this particular puzzle don’t fit together. Tony Brathwaite and Jonathan Partington provide admirable support as, respectively, a smarmy TV talk-show host blinded by his self-absorption and a pornographer whose lack of illusions endow him with deep spiritual insights into others.— DAN ROTTENBERG