To reminisce is to stir up ghosts; there is something uncanny about the act of remembering. Playwright Matthew Whittet taps directly into the strangeness but also the joy of deep recollection with Seventeen, a play that encourages a kind of exhumation of former selves, on stage and in the audience. Its genius lies in its dual aspect, the way it is haunted by the future as much as the past.
We open in a children’s playground, a setting that should be trite but that reveals hidden layers of meaning. School’s out forever as the cast of characters gather to celebrate their matriculation, drink too much, pash each other and fret about their prospects. It would be too quotidian but for the central conceit: these 17-year-olds are played by actors decades older, some in their 70s.
