This Is Our Youth: A Play

This Is Our Youth, Kenneth Lonergan’s lacerating look at affluent young Manhattanites of the 1980s, depicts two days in the lives of three college-age Upper West Siders who are from wealthy families but living in doped-up squalor.

Dennis―with a famous painter father and social activist mother―is a small-time drug dealer and total mess. His hero-worshipping friend Warren has just impulsively stolen $15,000 from his father, an abusive lingerie tycoon. When Jessica, a mixed-up prep school girl, shows up for a date, Warren pulls out a wad of bills and takes her off, awkwardly, for a night of seduction. A wildly funny, bittersweet, and moving story, This Is Our Youth is as trenchant as it was upon its acclaimed premiere in 1996.