SMOKESCREEN CLEARS AIR

Play Offers Real Dope About Teen Drug Use

Theatre review Smokescreen

Manitoba Theatre for Young People

Opens tonight, to March 4

Tickets: $12

TRENT is a 16-year-old marijuana trafficker who can't make out, through the
haze of his pot-smoking, the detrimental effect that getting high is having
on his life. His desperate but fed-up father, Jeff, has ratted him out to
the cops, pressured him to plead guilty to dealing 42 grams, and offered a
$2,000 bribe to his son's youth-care worker Rayzee so he can eavesdrop on
Trent's drug assessment.

Smokescreen, the new teen issue play at Manitoba Theatre for Young People
sets up a classic generational and father-son clash of values over
marijuana use that mirrors the gaping divide within contemporary Canadian
society. Trent is numerous tokes over the line that has been drawn by his
concerned father and the legal system.

Playwright David S. Craig's penetrating reality show doubles as a
cautionary tale that wisely leaves it to viewers to come up with answers.
Rather, Smokescreen -- seen at a school performance yesterday -- seeks to
clear the air and offer the real dope about being high 24/7.

Theatre that reflects teen drug use may carry a certain cachet with high
schoolers but a static, 55-minute talkfest, whose essential stage props are
two chairs, runs the risk of feeling like another class.

In one chair sits the slumping figure of the typical unresponsive teen,
dressed in tuque, hoodie and jeans, who wishes his dad would butt out about
his smoking weed, which he claims "makes boring things more interesting."
He doesn't view himself as a criminal and supports marijuana
decriminalization. Trent balks at coffee ("It's a drug") and proudly
declares his body is a chemical-free zone. When Rayzee points out there are
more than 400 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic, in marijuana, the teen
feigns weariness, another side-effect, Rayzee notes, of using.

While marijuana is responsible for the buzz around Smokescreen, it neatly
probes the disconnect between a parent whose child has become a stranger.
Craig, who found inspiration in his own conversations about his children's
consumption of grass, does not let the dad off easily. Hard-hearted Jeff is
generally unsympathetic but well-meaning, and unprepared to allow any
chance of his son having a long-term drug problem. "I'm not gambling that
he's 'probably' going to turn out all right," he tells Rayzee.

The Toronto playwright's son, Andrew Craig, plays Trent will a
smooth-flowing sullenness and discontent, marked by the occasional flare-up
of anger with his father. It pours out so effortlessly that you wonder if
he is acting.

Stewart Arnott powerfully communicates the frustration of a parent torn by
wanting to keep his child safe but also responsible for his or her choices.
As the scattered Rayzee, Keira Loughran succeeds as the referee, voice of
experience and unlikely role model.

Although Craig and director Edward Roy might want to look at enlivening the
visual presentation of this play, Smokescreen sees clearly through the
cloud of justifications about increasing teenage marijuana use.