BFF

BFF offers a compelling thesis on adolescent friendships and how they effect people in later life, but I left feeling that the play isn't quite fully fleshed out. At a brisk ninety minutes, it asks many questions and leaves most of them unanswered, focusing more on the play's conceit of jumping back and forth in time than the actual topic at hand. Another problem is that we end up more interested in the story of the past (set in the early nineties) than the present day narrative, which finds the play's central character (a terrific Sasha Eden) still suffering from the mistakes of her youth. In a perfect play, we'd care equally about both the catalyst and the aftermath; here, I kept waiting for the flashbacks and dreading the modern day solipsism. Eden and her two castmates, Jeremy Webb and Laura Heisler, are both exceedingly good; the latter is perfectly cast as a gawky pre-teen with no interest in growing up. I would really love to see the playwright, Anna Ziegler, expand on what she already has and make the play more compelling and smooth. Through clarifications and rewrites, this play could have a long life.