Theatre review: This is Our Youth, The Basement

Actors (from left) Alex MacDonald, Ryan Dulieu, and Alex Jordan play Dennis, Warren and Jessica.

Wordy script perfectly delivered but no ‘80s pastiche to be seen.

This is the second Basement play in two years about young New Yorkers mouthing off like there's no tomorrow, annoying the hell out of each other, stoned out of their brains. Last year's The Motherf***er With the Hat analysed working class characters while this production (a 1996 drama by native New Yorker Kenneth Lonergan) dissects rich slackers living on the upper West Side in 1982.

But the result is similar: a claustrophobic city slice of intriguing, aggressive and hyper-articulate characters whose vulnerability (and self-obsession) makes them rough each other up.

They're regular kids, trying to live on the edge, "high on fear". Daddy's money is a dubious safety net; it becomes an enabler of risky behaviour, and Warren (Ryan Dulieu) literally lugs his personal baggage with him.

Benjamin Henson's direction emphasises the drama rather than the laughs, and Christine Urquhart's bar-frame set is sandwiched between two opposing audience blocks, creating an atmosphere of restrictive enclosure.

Alex MacDonald as drug-dealing Dennis is a suitably threatening and unpredictable physical presence. When he bullies, using his black book of contacts as a weapon, his overblown self-marketing and his attempt at domination is both funny and repugnant: "I created you, Stewie, and I can destroy you just as easily!" he hollers down the phone.

Dulieu is excellent as Dennis' whipping boy Warren; his sympathetic performance saves the son of "arguably the most dangerous lingerie manufacturer in the world" from two-dimensional victimhood.

Warren's dialogue with Alex Jordan as Jessica is one of the highlights of the show: flirtatious, anxious teen philosophising.

The pacing (and memorising) of the wordy script is spot on - fast and natural, although some lines were muffled - but an intermission in the 100 minutes would be welcome.

Somewhat disappointingly, the design refuses to give us a cartoon pastiche of the Reagan years - there are no leg warmers or Rubik's Cubes as there were in the Silo production of the same play 10 years ago.

Instead, Dennis' low crotch trousers look suspiciously 2015 hipster.

Entertaining egotists.

What: This is Our Youth

Where and when: The Basement, to April 18