This is Our Youth journeys through 48 hours of this amoral landscape with the first batch of young adults of the 80’s slacker generation.

Manhattan. Upper West Side. 1982. The Reagan Administration is enjoying its early, fast-and-loose period, Sony has just released the first consumer CD player, and the Dow Jones has hit its first all-time high in more than nine years.

Meet Dennis, Warren and Jessica; three middle-class college-age Upper West Siders. Three disposable offspring of the elite who have to date managed to waste away their lives in doped-up squalor.

This is Our Youth journeys through 48 hours of this amoral landscape with the first batch of young adults of the 80’s slacker generation. Simultaneously witty and lacerating, it explores the desolate, dead-end universe of young Manhattanites with rich parents and no direction. By turns caustic, cruel and compassionate, This is Our Youth unfailingly exposes the narcissism of this dissolute urban tribe.

Dennis – with a “serious” painter for a father and a social activist mother – is a small time drug dealer and a total mess. His hero-worshipping, indifferently adjusted friend Warren has just stolen $15,000 from his father, an abusive lingerie tycoon with criminal connections. And Jessica is a mixed-up prep school girl who shows up for a first date with Warren and gets whisked off for a night of New York seduction with his stolen funds.

Written by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me, Gangs of New York, Analyze This), this is a deeply touching, witty and devastating portrait of three rich-kid Manhattanites, whose self-abusive and patternless lives signal the start of a malaise we are only now seeing the fall-out from – the belief that greed is good and a quick-fix is always the answer.

This is Our Youth also marks the return of founding Artistic Director Jimmy Fay to the helm at Bedrock, following a year’s sabbatical at The Abbey Theatre, where as acting Literary Director he directed a number of highly acclaimed productions, including Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Seafarer by Conor McPherson and The Playboy of the Western World in a new version by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle.

Booking and Listing Information

This Is Our Youth

Written by Kenneth Lonergan

Directed by Jimmy Fay

Venue The Cube, Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Previews 17 June

Opens 18 June

Runs Until 27 June

Time: 8.15pm

Tickets Full: €20 / Concession: €16

Booking (+353 1) 881 9613/4 | www.projectartscentre.ie | At Project Box Office