For the last dozen years, from the peak of Generation X to the lesser-known Generation Y (or whatever branding the pundits eventually decided on), there has been an ongoing discussion about the apathy of America's youth. Our society's elders have commented on young people's laziness, and it appears that young people have now embraced these low expectations and wear them as a badge of honor. How else could one explain Richard Lovejoy's play Tiny Dynamite, which seems to get off on its own obnoxious contempt for and dissociation from the world? At the start of the show, a young woman begins a monologue as she pulls props out of a large wooden box. She speaks in cheerful terms about her sad life, as if she's talking to an ex who is not in the room. One gets the feeling that she's leaving somewhere. The date on a calendar onstage says, "December 31st."
The calendar is flipped to January, and we are 12 months before that first scene. The woman (Liz) is moving in with her bland ex-lover (Jon), his bratty sister (Jen), and their lazy friend (Ben) in an undersized apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Liz has a hard time adapting to their carefree, party-heavy lifestyle and begins to have feelings again for Jon. Jen and Ben interpret Liz's seriousness and desire to spend more time with Jon as selfishness. Their living situation begins to unravel, and Liz decides that she'll kill herself on Dec. 31.
The script, with its faithful re-creation of the stilted dialogue and dull situations of real life, does no favors for the cast. When Lovejoy strays from the everyday and tries to inject some drama into the proceedings, it comes across as ridiculously clich
