IF WE KISS
by Rachel Vail
PRESS:
“Adapted from her novel, Rachel Vail’s script for If We Kiss arrives as a romantic comedy acutely attuned to the interior weather of adolescence — the charged silences, the moral vertigo, the way a single, impulsive act can reorganize an entire social universe. Its heroine, Charlotte “Charlie” Collins, is a teenager caught at the precise moment when innocence gives way to self-consciousness, when desire first announces itself not as pleasure but as complication. The inciting incident is almost laughably small yet the production and director Zachary Elkind understand, with admirable seriousness, that for a young person this is nothing less than an earthquake.
What If We Kiss captures, with rare delicacy, is the way young people experience such convergences as both comic and catastrophic. The play treats adolescent feeling with respect, refusing to condescend to its intensity while still allowing space for humor and grace. In doing so, it reminds us that first love is never merely personal: it is social, moral, and—when the generations begin to rhyme—quietly political.
What might, in a lesser telling, register as adolescent melodrama is here rendered with the grave, slow-burn inevitability of classical tragedy, its stakes measured not in kingdoms but in consciences.”
“If We Kiss is more realistic then most romcom cliches — even as it speeds toward a happy ending, it careens through the genuine ups-and-downs of adolescent emotions. How minimal? Well, during that first kiss, Charlie tells us, “So there I am, pressed up against a brick wall, kissing Kevin Lazarus. A decorative sticking-out brick is digging into my backbone, but I don’t want to wreck my first kiss by re-adjusting. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to concentrate.” To bring that to life, Hartke rushes onstage as Charlie speaks and shoves a brick into the small of her back. No building, just one brick. It’s so charming it earns its laugh.
For all the comedic touches, the show accurately captures the outsized terrors of high school.”
