"Yellow Moon" Rises in the Ex

“Yellow Moon,” the story of two teenage outcasts who fall in love, opens with murder. Lee (Eli W. Pelton ’16) kills his abusive stepfather with a knife in the midst of a passionate brawl. Leila (Juliana N. Sass ’17) witnesses the murder and together, she and Lee run away to the north Highlands of Scotland.

Premiering on Thursday in the Loeb Ex, this modern-day “Bonnie and Clyde” explores both the positive and negative parts of human relationships.

“Leila desperately wants to be part of a story,” Sass says. “Even though she is horrified by the fact that [Lee] murdered someone, she is fascinated by the fact that she’s part of a journey. Because of that, she goes with him.”

Written by Scottish playwright David Greig, the play sets up its two main characters as opposites. Acquaintances in a small town, Leila is nicknamed “Silent Leila” because she never speaks, and Lee is a well known extrovert. However, as their journey together develops, their initial impressions of each other change. “We come to see that his extroversion is a bit of a front in the same way that her silence is,” Sass says.

Alternating between dialogue and narration by each character, the show features more and more dialogue as it continues. Sass also says that this particular structure signifies the increasing lack of control the characters have over the story as they get to know each other better.

“They are all very real characters that have a lot of wonderful things about them and a lot of great flaws,” director Susanna B. Wolk ’14 says. “I think it’s about how we fall in love with people’s flaws.”