Early into Admissions, a searing satire that tackles white privilege and liberal guilt now showing at Studio Theatre, an aggrieved white teenager launches into a blistering screed about race. Charlie Mason (the electric Ephraim Birney) is a top student with excellent extracurricular credentials at his New Hampshire boarding school. His best friend Perry, whose father is black, was just accepted to Yale (despite, in Charlie’s estimation, a less impressive application). Charlie, on the other hand, was deferred by the same admissions board. Oh, the indignity.
During his breathless tantrum, a combination of sharp writing and thrilling execution, Charlie fumes about diversity trumping pure merit. A young woman was named editor in chief of the school newspaper over him, though he’s “an objectively better writer.” South American students are considered people of color, though many descend from white European conquistadors. And what about Kim Kardashian? Is she Asian, since part of her family is from Armenia? You get the idea.
This MAGA-adjacent tirade is delivered to the horror of Charlie’s patrician parents. They, in a delicious twist, are high-ranking administrators at his current school. Bill (the excellent Kevin Kilner) is its headmaster, Sherri (Meg Gibson, fabulous and strikingly reminiscent of Catherine O’Hara) its dogged admissions director. Both are proud white liberals who regularly criticize White Male Hegemony. Sherri, notably, relishes her ongoing effort to diversify the campus. In an extended gag with Roberta (Studio stalwart Sarah Marshall), the school’s brochure is overhauled multiple times with painstaking detail, to project an image of inclusivity.
But the couple’s piety crumbles when the tables turn and their son’s career prospects slip from their grasp. In a turnabout, Charlie rescinds applications to his prestigious safety schools. He’ll instead attend a community college, freeing up his college fund for a new scholarship at his parent’s school, to further increase diversity. “We’re not talking about diversity,” his mother says, at once appalled and hypocritical: “We’re talking about you.”
Admissions examines and interrogates the liberal principles it shares. It’s also a provocative comedy unafraid to incite laughter from uncomfortable material. Playwright Joshua Harmon (the man behind the sensational Bad Jews) knows a thing or two about needling his target demographic, and writing a sharp quip.
I hated a recent, sanctimonious production because it preached to the choir. Admissions is an inverse example. This riotous and insightful show leaves no one—especially those on the political left—fully intact. Admissions isn’t friendly fire, but an act of self-preservation. After all, a broken bone eventually heals and emerges stronger than ever.
Admissions runs from January 16 through February 17 at Studio Theatre (1501 14th Street NW). Tickets are $20-$110.
