The spine of the story revolves around a lengthy conversation - is it a coming together or a further breaking apart? - by the prodigal Mick and Sara, a medical student who is as responsible as her ex-lover is flaky.
Mick is drawn to figure out what broke the pair apart on the same night that his parents, Maureen and Terry, are facing up to the fissures in their own relationship. The catalyst for both conversations is a curious, manipulative 17-year-old - known only as Boy - who corresponds with Mick over the Internet, and has come to insinuate himself with both of Mick's parents through writing classes and therapy sessions.
Considering the dynamics of individual relationships is one of the central puzzles of the play, but another question is figuring out the story of the Boy's troubled past, says director Kirstie Gulick Rosenfield.
Boy's a promising fiction writer, but his work is marred by his obsession with happy endings, and so his teacher advises him to dig deeper and find the ending within his material. The end of the story has to come out of the beginning or the middle, so there's only one possibility, Maureen claims. "When you apply that thinking to literature, it makes good essays," Rosenfield says, "but when you apply it to life, it's fatalism."
And so the play asks: How do we find the path to growing up? Are there multiple stories of ourselves, or multiple possibilities, available along the way? Is it possible there can be multiple endings?
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Contact Ellen Fagg at ellenf@sltrib.com or 801-257-8621. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib .com.
Modern love
"Boy" opens with preview performances at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday at the Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 W. 500 North, Salt Lake City. The play opens Friday and plays through Feb. 26, with curtain times at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $18-$33.50, available through 801-363-SLAC or visiting http://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org.
