Prozac: The Choice of a 'WASTED!' New Generation

HARVARD STUDENTS JUST CAN'T get enough of anti-depressants, either from UHS or in their own artistic pursuits. First there was Elizabeth Wurtzel '88 and her best-seller Prozac Nation. Then, last spring, Jen Cox '95 made a film based on a similar theme which has since been screening at art houses in the area. Now, Zoe Sarnat '97 has written and directed a cool nightmare entitled "WASTED!," which deals with a group of medicated patients at a recovery center. What is refreshing about Sarnat's take is how she stays away from self-serving philosophizing and lofty judgments and instead demonstrates how the wrong kinds of drugs can make bad emotional situations even worse.

Sarnat sure knows her psychotropic drugs. As the characters are introduced and their dosages cataloged, their mental instability becomes evident. The lead character, Cory (Melissa Gibson '99), is an accident waiting to happen. Because she takes copious amounts of pills, she is hardly aware of what she says or does. She makes the mistake of teasing a pick-up, Mike (Jason Dean '96), and then not consenting to sex. As she undresses and trades clothes with him, she trades identities and gender roles as well. Cory serenades Mike with such sweet compliments that his eventual brutality comes as a shame, but also as a relief; if she had shut up and calmed down earlier, Mike wouldn't have had to take control of the situtation, slap her around and rape her. (This remark is not politically correct and neither is the tone of the play.) After the violation occurs, Cory does the only thing an irresponsible youth is conditioned to do: overdose. Only, like a total fool, she swallows a bottle of Prozac.

"I thought this was some kind of sorority," says Mike, completely baffled by the set-up he has stumbled upon. To be fair, the recovery center is a type of sorority, though the coterie includes one man. The females each represent some stereotype about women. The earthy Ruby (B.U. student Jan Potier) does a marvelous job of conveying her sexual appetite. Lisa (Kate Fletcher '99) is a meek girl who constantly vomits because of side effects from her prescriptions. Heather (Claire Schwab '99) is a Polyanna in charge of these spoiled brats, even though her character is just as clueless as the rest. The only male patient is David (grad student Dan Fitzgerald), who does a convincing job at affecting the disturbed persona of a war-shattered soldier, even if his motivations are not always clear.

The cellar-like Kronauer Space is well-suited for the play, which alternates between outdoor scenes and the dungeon-like atmosphere of the recovery center. Set designer Kate Khamsi '95 deserves kudos for rendering both the interior and exterior settings with a bleak but psychedelic flair. Inside the recovery center, for instance, the common room is decked out in metal, with a silver duct-taped couch and a plant partially painted silver. These touches do more than conjure up images of Warhol's factory; they remind the audience how robotic pharmacueticals can make people.

For the unstable Cory, the world outside of the clinic is no more comforting. Ghoulish faces stencilled in silver all over the walls haunt her. Not even the smooth, bad-ass lingo of her friend 9eyes (David Jacobs) can help to calm her down from either a bad trip or serious withdrawl. One such tense moment between 9eyes and Cory is where Sarnat's writing, Gibson's spastic acting and Khamsi's decor work best to explore the depths of madness. Still, the scene is symptomatic of how unhelpful the male characters are.

The only mature figure in the play is Cory's mother, played memorably by Asya Muchnick '97. Presumably, her mother is responsible for Cory's stay at the clinic. The scenes where mother visits daughter are incredibly tense, and since Muchnick is not drugged up like the others, her emotions are all the more sincere and piercing.

"WASTED!" does not pretend to examine an insane asylum, but rather an ordinary halfway house. Sarnat is more attuned to moments of deadpan humor than sticking to feelings of absolute despair and frustration. Like a talk-show, "WASTED!" has an episodic quality; the scenes are quick and short, with numerous fade-outs in between. Some of the actors, including Potier and Jacobs, have enough savvy to know that as much as their characters are supposed to be real people, their personas are meant to subvert the stereotypical notions of estranged youth.

While Sarnat has the opportunity to present mental sickness in a much more disturbing way, her humor makes the existential grief of these characters more palatable--like the sugar coating on a pill. The characters can't help being regressive, what with all the medication they take. The humor, like the attractive musical score, is a reminder of happier emotions; but the play's ultimate message is that, in the words of one patient, "Dead is free."