←Recommendations of Basically Children

BASICALLY CHILDREN should be required reading for every college student. No one understands the way the Internet works like Charlie O’Leary.

This play really knows its way around a conversation. Seeing this scenario played out on the level of individual human connections brings some much needed complexity to what's often framed in the discourse as a clear-cut battle between age categories, or political affiliations. Nevertheless, it doesn't pull any punches demonstrating how a person on a mission that seems too obviously moral to question can become politically useful to their own enemies.

THIS PLAY... is prescient and brilliant. No one writes about the internet like Charlie. As discourse blooms and curdles on a once-a-month cycle these days, it is thrilling to see a writer tackle the Internet homophobia industrial complex with such compassion and skill. You will love and hate every character in equal measure, and you will laugh, cringe, and shiver in equal measure. I'm biased, but Basically Children is required reading for all people trying to make sense of the cultural behemoth that we are all a part of.

Each of the three sections of this play unearthed new complexities in the characters and issues addressed, and I loved how each section both lived in its own theatrical world, while also creating a cohesive whole with the others. The meeting and courtship of Joshua and Erin and the conversations they have about intersectional queerness are sweet and poignant and charming and messy. The conversations that follow about consent, age gaps in relationships, sexual assault, gay male hookup culture, and the conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia in historical and contemporary discourse is thorough and well-rendered. The ending is haunting.