In 2014, a group of seniors gather at their tiny liberal arts college to do one last “all nighter” before finishing finals and graduating. These friends rent a house together, so domestic squabbles are in the air. Darcie (Kristine Frøseth) is upset because the other girls ate the pasta she was saving for the week. Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott) and Jacquline (Kathryn Gallagher) debate what foods go best with hummus. Lizzy (Havana Rose Liu) is supplying the Adderall for the night and is distressed because she’s missing two pills. Fueled by stimulants and snacks, the women get to work, until bigger sources of conflict come to light.
Initially, Margolin’s characters seem like stereotypes of anxiety-ridden, sheltered millennials, apologizing endlessly with over-the-top affirmations of each other’s feelings, with vocabulary clearly picked up from their therapists. But the actors craft highly specific performances, and Margolin’s use of therapy-speak becomes more pointed, illustrating how weaponizing psychology can force cohesion under the guise of “connecting.” The worst thing for these women to be is self-un-aware, as when Lizzy backtracks after Jacquline accuses her of “doing that thing where you feel the need to villainize one of us.” It’s a wickedly funny and smart throughline that highlights Margolin’s sharp observations of group psychology.
Even with Wilma to spur things on, the play doesn’t cut deep enough. Lizzy tries to get the group to acknowledge that they’ve harmed each other with their psychology-speak, but she too easily gives up and falls back in line. That reinforces the point of the play, but those wounds could have been torn open sooner. Similarly, the end of the play relies on twists that have deep implications that are hinted at but not explored. There’s years of rot under the surface of this friend group, but the characters only skim off the top before coming back together. Because the characters hold back instead of going all out, the stakes never grow beyond the college campus.
As is, these characters fold underneath the weight of these themes. The play falls apart as it tries to find its resolution: one character’s big reveal is awkwardly dropped a few minutes before curtain, inviting more questions than answers. And the play’s last gesture, a heavy-handed metaphor about the morning bringing these friends into an unknown future, does little more than emphasize the depth absent in the material. All Nighter’s characters are recognizable types, though well-observed versions of them, each, in this case, played by a young actress porting over some energy from a familiar film, musical, or TV role.
Margolin demonstrates great skill with building a narrative that jives perfectly with director Jaki Bradley’s sense of pacing, but even that could stand to be more pointed; at several instances during the play the group splits off, with two or more characters sitting or standing in a spotlight off to the side of the main action. Sometimes two conversations happen in tandem, the spotlight alternating between the two, but there’s little to suggest the correlation or contrast among these simultaneous scenes.
Despite the limitations of the script and the direction, there are standouts in the cast. Liu’s performance pops when Liz is most anxious and vulnerable, and Lester immediately brightens up the stage as Wilma, providing a much-needed dose of chaotic energy.
Wilson Chin’s spacious, airy set design strikes a balance that the play lacks. The generic college dorm chairs, gathered around a large wooden study table near a pillar taped with notices for things like the “Spring Career Fair,” all evoke the insular world of college life. But the open feel of the Johnson Ballroom, with its panoramic windows, suggests everything that lies beyond, in the adult world.
Eventually, all of Checkhov’s guns start committing self-inflicting wounds. Margolin might know these characters innately – they all seem very real and believable, but they would have sniffed each other’s flaws out earlier than four full years together in the play they come off more like chess pieces than adults. The politicking goes from passive-agressiveness, from micro-agressions to macro-aggressions. There’s a tender and tough conversation, for instance, about why one of the group members keeps going back to a terrible man, and it passes by too quickly.
Much of the last third of the drama revolves around a lost credit card. Margolin has noted the class distinctions between her characters, but then resists actually deploying the explosion you keep assuming will erupt over money. (We also hear a whole lot about the violation of being robbed, which is fair, but little from the perhaps more fraught perspective of not having the means to keep up with all that conspicuous consumption in the first place.)
Structurally, the math all checks out, but without the gut punch of catharsis that would actually make it land. She’s also decided to leave the exact nature of what she’s describing up in the air. The unsatisfactory outcome is a fade signaling it’s the patrons who must suss out which of the possible truths the actual truth is.
All Nighter
MCC Theater Space
www.allnighterplay.com
