'3/4 of a Mass for St. Vivian': A Fully Realized New Work

Nora Woolley, left, and Marybeth Fritzky in the Theater Alliance production. (By Colin Hovde -- Theater Alliance)

The Theater Alliance's sensitive, engaging production of "3/4 of a Mass for St. Vivian" makes the case that 17 is a fine age to write a play.

Actually, 17-year-old student Phoebe Rusch was a mere 15 when she wrote "St. Vivian," a two-character drama about mismatched girls who strike up a deep, delirious friendship. But that was two years ago, and, you know, like, whatever. (That kind of gauzy teen-speak, by the way, is delightfully absent from this insightful script.)

Rusch's teenage characters, Emily and Vivian, are alive to each other in the exuberant way that really smart young people can be when they're beginning to fully hear the poets and sense the world.

Even from the play's earliest moments, something worthwhile is afoot. Paul-Douglas Michnewicz's easygoing, focused direction is in sync with the writing, and the actors are loose and confident.

It's the early 1970s -- groovy tunes in Mark K. Anduss's sound design leave no doubt -- and Emily is the strait-laced new kid in town, teasingly called "Auntie Em" by Vivian, the tantalizing hippie chick she hooks up with. (The nice touches in Kathleen Geldard's costumes include green-lensed John Lennon glasses for Viv, and Emily's white tights -- fashion fault lines that soften with time.) Vivian overflows with charisma, often talking in put-on accents that roam from the Continent to the Far East; she's terribly well-read and flamboyantly nihilistic.

Actress Nora Woolley has a good handle on Vivian's theatricality and deceptive double thrust, delivering the character's laid-back act and subtle aggressiveness with a cunning, blissed-out grin. Marybeth Fritzky's Emily is a little high-strung but game to keep pace, scrambling up the slope of Daniel Conway's clever little rooftop set at the H Street Playhouse and finding an equal footing with the intimidating Vivian by slow degrees.

The young women are much more alike than it would seem at first, and the script is acutely observant about how such friendships progress.

Things turn on a secret that's best left unrevealed here, the kind that often sends good stories spiraling toward maudlin finishes. (If you must have a hint, the Illinois teenager's work was last year's winner of the VSA arts' Playwright Discovery Award.)

But the tastefulness promised at the top is maintained throughout the 75-minute work, which unfolds in long, graceful scenes that almost never feel overwritten, even as the characters discourse with rising urgency on such very big topics as time and meaning.

Rusch displays her poetic streak only rarely, and each time to pointed effect. The play's lyricism isn't forced, and the characters are such colorful, thoughtful talkers that you're happy -- even moved -- to watch them sit on the roof and contemplate the moon.

3/4 of a Mass for St. Vivian, by Phoebe Rusch. Directed by Paul-Douglas Michnewicz. Through Sept. 3 at the H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE. Call 866-811-4111 or visit http://www.theateralliance.com .