Teen drama overflows in Riverfront’s production of ‘The Outsiders’
“The Outsiders” is a well-written story packed with teen-age emotions, which helps explain the play’s popularity at the high school level.
It’s popular, too, at Riverfront Playhouse, where Maria Drake is directing a cast of 12 teens and one adult. The coming-of-age drama, adapted by Christopher Sergel from the 1967 novel by S.E. Hinton, is posing an interesting challenge for Drake: getting kids to understand emotions they’ve never felt.
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“The anguish of loss has been hard for some of them, because they’ve never experienced it,” Drake said. “Most of these kids have not lost anybody.”
To help with that hurdle, and to accommodate the busy schedule of graduations and vacations, Drake scheduled 12 weeks of rehearsals instead of the usual eight. With a preview performance Friday and opening night on Saturday, Drake is happy with the young cast’s progress.
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“I’ve got a great cast of kids. They’re amazing at being able to portray everything I’ve asked them to do,” Drake said.
It helps that five of the cast members — Shay Little, Jessie Lane Jr., Robert Burke, Kathlyn Smith and Elizabeth Caccia — have graced the Riverfront stage before. “They’re helping the others realize what they can do and can’t do on our stage, which is a little different,” said Drake of the Riverfront stage that faces two groups of audience members. “You can’t do the same things you’d do on a flat stage. We do ‘cheating out,’ which is something they don’t do” during high school productions.
Hinton started writing “The Outsiders” as a 16-year-old high school student and set the story in her native Tulsa, Okla., in 1965. It concerns the conflict between two gangs divided by their status: the blue-collar “greasers” and the more affluent “socs” (short for ‘socials’).
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Ponyboy Curtis, played by Jessie Lane Jr., is the narrator and protagonist. He’s a greaser from the wrong side of the tracks, and even though he’s entangled in urban warfare, he’s still attracted to sunsets and haunted by the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
Hinton said she deliberately wrote “The Outsiders” from a boy’s point of view. “That's why I'm listed as S.E. Hinton rather than Susan. (I figured most boys would look at the book and think 'What can a chick know about stuff like that!') None of the events are taken from life, but the rest—how kids think and live and feel—is for real. The characters—Dallas, who wasn't tough enough; Sodapop, the happy-go-lucky dropout; Bob, the rich kid whose arrogance cost him his life; Ponyboy, the sensitive, green-eyed Greaser who didn't want to be a hood—they're all real to me.”
In addition to Lane, the cast includes Kathlyn Smith as Cherry; Michael Fields as Dallas; Christiano Sema as Sodapop Curtis; Madilyn Thompson as Two-bit; Elizabeth Caccia as Marcia; Robert Burke as Bob; Shay Little as Johnny Case; Izzy Hayes as Darry Curtis; Emily Hyatt as Sandy; Kyle Thompson as Randy; Olivia Parham as Jerry; and Alison Sugimoto as Mrs. O’Bryant.
What: “The Outsiders”
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday preview and weekends through Aug. 25; 2 p.m. matinees Aug. 5, 12 and 19
Where: Riverfront Playhouse, 1620 E. Cypress Ave. in Redding.
Tickets: $10, preview; $20, evenings; $15, matinees; $25, closing night; available at Enjoy the Store, 1475 Placer St. or visit www.riverfrontplayhouse.net