‘I’m Alive You Bastards and I Always Will Be’

In this outrageous roller coaster ride of a play Lang (Sonya Lanelle Chavez) and Jak (Allison Lewis Towbes) are a pair of high strung teenagers living a mostly unsupervised life somewhere in the desert. Their dysfunctional relationship echoes both the bad history Jak shares with her cousin Florian (Richey Nash), who may or may not have abused her, and the savage brand of parenting practiced by Lang’s mother Rhonda (Jenna Scanlon). When the girls find a dead dog (Matthew Goldsholl), his body becomes the focus for their fantasies about Icky Icky, an imaginary friend with some terrible tendencies. The situation escalates when a tough acting gay couple, Tweek (Terry Li) and Dex (Monique Rosario) arrive and start playing dangerous games with everyone they encounter. Directors Kate Bergstrom and Travis Smillie torqued these performers up to their limits, and when the dead dog gets up and goes for a shopping cart ride, all hell breaks loose. By turns uproarious and sinister, I’m Alive… Takes the kind of liberties with language and situation one associates with the cinema of Quentin Tarantino or the theater of Tracy Letts, only this time the main characters are all teenagers. The outstanding cast did an excellent job of reaching for the raw edge of this material without slipping over into chaos.