Not Just an Afterschool Special

DO NOT BRING YOUR KIDS. That’s the first thing advertised in the description for Boys and Girls, a play that emerged from the Irish spoken word scene and is part of Origin’s 1st Irish festival at 59E59 Theaters. And I would agree with them wholeheartedly that it’s definitely not suitable for children. But as a young adult who hasn’t quite grown up into the world of real “adults” I found it to be very funny and enriching. Yes, it’s dirty, and yes, it could be deemed provocative, but at its core Boys and Girls is blatantly honest, gritty, and real. Boys and Girls comes to the U.S. from a run at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2013, and gives Americans a taste of the Dublin nightlife scene. The play follows one night in the lives of four young Irish folk, each story told in extreme detail by the actor going through it. There’s the misogynistic playboy; the girl holding on to a relationship that hasn’t stimulated her for quite some time; a young man who’s been raised to treat women with respect; and a lost young woman just looking to get lucky for the night. Each shapes a real, living and breathing person, all of whom feel like friends by the end of the hour—because let’s face it, we intimately know each of those people. We go out with them on the weekends, we gossip about them with our friends. Boys and Girls lets you in on the intimacies of their night out.