Suburbia.

by music by Eric Bogosian Eric Bogosian

Suburbia is about a group of suburban twenty-year-olds who get together by a convenience store one autumn night to welcome an old pal returning from a successful national tour with his rock band. His arrival in a limousine replete with entourage precipitates an all-night whirlwind of drinking, sex, and violence. As the sun rises over the strip mall parking lot, tragedy and comedy have laced through these nine young lives and changed them forever.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction, College, Contemporary

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Keith Moser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just found out the local community college was auditioning for Eric Bogosian's Suburbia so I picked up my copy to reread it to check if there's a role for me. To be fair, I probably am no longer able to play a 20-something, but when I shave I have a baby face and there's always dye for my grays... Honestly, I was only 90% sure I read it before, so I figured a quick read would help my annual reading challenge, so why not?

The play felt familiar, so I'm pretty sure this was my second reading of it. I have The Essential Bogosian which I'm pretty sure I haven't read, but at least I've read this twice now.

Set in the '90s, the play takes place over one evening at The Corner, a popular hangout behind a suburban 7-Eleven. A bunch of young twenty-somethings eat pizza, drink beer, smoke, and talk to each other while annoying Norman, the Pakistani owner/manager of the 7-Eleven, and his sister.

Tim is the oldest (and rudest) of the young adults; after a short stint in the Air Force, he's returned home with a very sexist & racist outlook on life. He spends most of his days drunk on The Corner yelling epithets at Norman while randomly sneaking up onto the roof.

Jeff and Sooze are your typical college couple—she's artistic and wants to move to NYC, while he's full of ideas and rants but seems too scared to leave home.

Buff is a big oaf who drinks more than he should and sings House of Pain while Bee-Bee is a friend of Sooze's who was sent to rehab by her parents for getting caught drinking underage. The two seem to have a quick hookup, but Buff moves along to someone else later that night.

Speaking of, this night is special because Pony, an old friend of the group, is returning home as he tours the country with his popular band. The group doesn't want to spend $20 a ticket to see his show, but they do wait for him to bring his limo to The Corner and tell them all of his fame and fortune.

The play is very Gen-X and I (mostly) enjoyed what happened throughout. The scenes were well-written, with a nice flow of exits and entrances that felt natural. I love any play that has just one location that doesn't feel forced (like they used one location to only save money). My biggest problem was the characters and their reactions.

Tim was truly an asshole, using every imaginable slur against Norman (except for any actual ones for Pakistanis) and Norman & his sister do react pretty believably to him. But I can't tell why anyone else is actually friends with this slightly older guy. He left for the military after high school, so it's not like he was just always around them. And I could totally see him in a MAGA hat, spouting off alt-right chants, but no one else here felt that crazy.

When Tim meets Pony's manager, Erica, he says some of the most demeaning stuff imaginable, and yet she has no reaction—she actually seems to like it and flirts with him! I can't imagine how someone could play Erica realistically—it's almost insulting to see how Bogosian writes her.

So other than one majorly flawed female character, and a few other unbelievable interactions/relationships, I mostly enjoyed this play. I'm not sure if the director found someone to play the role he was having difficulty filling or if I'll still be needed at auditions, but this is definitely a play I wish I had auditioned for ten years ago... I'm probably too far into my thirties for the show (especially with a bunch of actual college kids in the cast) and most of the guys in the cast kiss someone and one strips down to his underwear (or possibly further?) so we'll have to see... Glad I read it though. Maybe I'll actually get into The Essential Bogosian—I saw Talk Radio on Broadway with Liev Schreiber and it would be nice to revisit that as well.

[Christopher Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Bogosian is complicated. I've never been sure if I like him. In reading subUrbia, there was some clarity offered to that uncertainty.

I read a few of his plays long ago and was drawn to his raw, dark take on the modern world. I suppose that still carries its appeal for me. I'm a stronger reader than I was at the height of my youthful angst, and I'm more concerned about the mechanics of emotion that authors/playwrights utilize in their works.

In SubUrbia (the New Version), Act I. felt way over the top. The language felt weird; like it was trying too hard. It felt like an adult trying to write in the slang of youth; an effort that rarely lands for anyone. It felt like an effort to throw poop at a very large target, from a very close distance.

However, there are three more acts.

As the play progresses, it became apparent that Bogosian is focusing the microscope for us. First, we get the caricature of Americana and then for the remainder of the play, we cut deeper and deeper into the anatomy of the nihilism and pain of the American dream.

It was also fascinating to read a play that was written in the early nineties and updated for a revival in 2017, the time setting of "the present," takes on transitory—yet eternal—properties. The musical references of the twenty-somethings are distinctly nineties, but there are mentions of iPods. The veteran in the story was compelled to join the navy for Operation Iraqi Freedom, fitting him nowhere near the time of the early nineties or of the late teens. Bogosian is a smart guy. He knows how a calendar works. This was on purpose.

The closing line of the play is "This is hell!" Bogosian's use of a no-time/always convention emphasizes an eternal repeating loop of life on the safe and insufferable rim. He underscores the small town sensibility of "This place is as good as any place. There is nothing better. There is nothing worse. Nothing matters. Might as well do nothing here."

I want to say that his bleakness is off the mark. But it is not. I also want to say that the bleakness is the shadow of hope. I don't think that's it either. However, in the forward, Bogosian does offer the honest insight that this was a reflection of the small town that he came from and that these were reflections of him and the people around him. It's not clear which character he may have used as a literary avatar. But his intimate portraits of the characters reveal an internal ugliness of racism, sexism, and violence contrasted against the internal beauties, brokennesses, and deep need for mercy and understanding. In doing so, Bogosian seems to pose the question "The world has real awfulness to it, what are you going to do with your life within in it?"

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointed to discover that I accidentally bought the revised edition from 2009, which was edited for a production from that year to include references to cell phones, the modern internet, the White Stripes, etc. These are incorporated perfectly well, and the story feels (unfortunately) just as relevant in 2024 as in 2009 as in 1995, but something about the texture of this play is so fundamentally '90s that it jars. Bogosian is setting up some of the themes of that decade, not responding to them. You can see why Richard Linklater (specifically) made it into a movie, which I should now see.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Teddy 🫀 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Im not sure how to feel about this tbh

[Romeo Channer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4. Quite good. Bleak. Showcases a truthful and disturbing array of dissatisfied, stupid young white men. Don’t love the way women are written, but they (mostly) make sense in the context of their interactions with these shitty men.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Closer to 1.5
I'm not saying it wasn't realistic, but it tried too hard to be appealing through its edginess. How did nothing happen yet it avoided a slice of life tone?
While we get different glimpses of the characters and what makes each of them their own person, like Tim's alcoholism, Pony's success, Sooze's art/brother, or Erica's upper class background, we don't really know what stops them from fixing their lives. I mean, obviously the play is set by ennui and unfortunately I can attest that people would rather be berserk than take a rational look at their choices. And for the Tims of the planet, you end up middling and taking it out on people who want to get out or the outsiders. Maybe this book was too depressing for me? Like, they don't even like each other or the 7/11 or anything yet they'd rather just wait there for their solution.
In hindsight, I should've figure something was up when he wrote in the acknowledgements that he was asked by a friend to write something about their town experience. Riiiight.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this long time ago as a movie, was curious to check out the source material. Maybe I am too old now or just not suburban enough to relate to a bunch of kids pontificating and getting wasted (in every sense of the word) in a convinience store's parking lot, but there is a sense of hopelessness throughout that is fairly universal. The writing is good and the play itself is thought provoking and it does reaffirm my dislike for suburbia as a living environment. The expression youth is wasted on the young has never been more apt really.

[Kassy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had such a strange time reading this play. I felt anger toward the characters throughout, but still felt grief at the end.

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first act of Eric Bogosian's subUrbia is mostly a slice of life, late one night in a small town somewhere (we presume) in America's Heartland. We meet, in rapid succession: Tim, 21, a recent vet of the War in Iraq, who now spends his aimless days drinking; Buff, timelessly young (though about Tim's age), a likable goof-up who works at a pizzeria; and Jeff, Tim's best friend, probably no smarter than the others but more aware of the world, his aspirations, and his seeming failure to get anyplace in his life so far. As Kenneth Lonergan put it in a play that came out shortly after this one first did (in the mid-'90s), this is our youth.

The situation that propels the happenings of subUrbia is the imminent arrival of "Pony"(Neil), the local boy-made-good. He and Jeff started a rock band together a few years back (though Pony will later dispute that fact); now Pony is a bona fide star, touring the country, raking in the bucks, and becoming famous. Sooze, Jeff's girlfriend, has arranged for the gang to meet up with Pony after a concert he's giving at a nearby arena. She arrives with her pal Bee-Bee at the designated meeting place (where all of the play occurs, in fact)--the parking lot in front of a convenience store, a spot that this group has obviously considered "theirs" for quite some time, much to the consternation of the store's current management, a Pakistani brother and sister who monitor the white kids' activities warily from inside the shop.

Up until the time that Pony arrives, subUrbia ranges around a bunch of topics, from the enormously serious to the egregiously trivial, as the old friends talk, argue, make up, and goof around:

BUFF: Every morning while I'm doing my abs I check out Sesame Street. There's this babe on the show, she's like a total fox. Saw her on a porn site.
JEFF: An actress on Sesame Street is on a porn site? What's her name?
BUFF: "Tiffany," "Brianna." I don't know, man! I saw it, with my own dick. There's this website, I charge it to my mom's phone? Unlimited porn links. Surf the net with one hand, choke the chicken with the other. Hey, speaking of choking the chicken, guess who I saw at the mall yesterday? "The Duck."
JEFF: "The Duck"?
BUFF: Remember? The guy who could blow himself.
JEFF: Oh God, right! What was he doing at the mall? Still blowing himself?
BUFF: Giving out pamphlets man. He's a yoga instructor now.
...
JEFF: Remember Fred Pierce? Buff says he's gay now.
TIM: Fred Pierce was the best running back we had, no way is he a fag.
BUFF: Yeah, well he isn't running anymore. He's in Marcy Memorial. Something's wrong with him.

It is, thus, very lifelike; it reminded me of Chekhov in the way that these young people dance all around their issues and problems without actually making a move to do anything about them. Indeed, just before the above exchange, Jeff says:

It's my duty as a human being to get pissed off. Not that it makes any difference in the first place. Nothing ever f**g changes. Fifty years from now, we'll all be dead and there'll be new people standing in this same spot drinking beer and eating pizza, bitching and moaning about the price of Oreos and they won't even know we were ever here. And fifty years after that, those suckers will be dust and bones.

Pony's entrance with his gorgeous blonde publicist Erica, near the end of Act One, sends the play in a different, troublesome direction, however. Suddenly Bogosian wants us to believe not only that this one kid could make good, which is plausible, but that all the rest can find transformation in a single night as well. Erica comes on to the drunk and sullen Tim; Pony comes on to Sooze; Buff, the very epitome of slackerdom, is offered a gig making videos in Hollywood. Plus a whole bunch of melodramatic stuff involving assault, guns, and drug overdoses that I don't want to detail lest I give some of the plot's surprises away. Are we really supposed to believe all of this? I know I didn't: the lyrical, wistful exploration of the latest lost generation has given way to LaLaLand soap.

Bogosian has updated his 1994 script with lots of timely references to the Internet and the current war, but he hasn't revisited it in an organic way to update the characters; had he done so, these 20-year-olds might feel more contemporary than they finally come across. That's unfortunate, as is the playwright's inclination to veer from vivid impressionism to a more conventional, action-packed narrative. subUrbia could really tell us some insightful things about what it means to be 20 in America. But at least in this version, authenticity seems to have gotten away.

[EJ Paras · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If it’s all so fucking futile what the fuck are you so fucking upset about, fuckhead?”
“I’m fucking alienated.”
“Me, too. I’m alienated, too. But at least there’s Oreos.”

My second Bogosian. I chose to read this play as I really loved Talk Radio and wanted to dive into more Bogosian. Was scrolling through Kieran Culkin’s Wiki page and saw he played Buff at Lincoln Center when this was performed there.

And Buff’s a fun character, but unless this gets another re-write (as I read this ‘new’ version from the 2000s), I don’t think it makes sense for me to play any of these characters, lol. They’re all distinctly white — save for the Pakistani characters working at the store.

I’d imagine this is a much more fun play to watch than just read. Because some of the dialogue is amazing and tasty — but yes, it's another show about arrested development that features shortsighted, ‘racist’ conversation. But hey, these guys don’t know any better!

"Who will I dream with?”
“You don’t have any dreams.”

And where the play ends, you don’t want to really be in their situations, either.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love that the sole setting of this play is a 7-11 parking lot. As I read this, my mind instantly pictured the 7-11 parking lot hangout of my suburban youth, though fortunately, that’s where my ability to personally relate to the play ends.

While my tame suburban upbringing entailed my friends and I creatively inventing fun with the limited tools at our disposal, usually involving the occupation of private property of others (parkour, skateboarding, sneaking into golf courses, and other innocent suburban transgressions), Bogosian portrays an ugly underside of suburbia. Ugliness really is the key word. The characters are ugly. Their relationships are ugly, their behavior and speech are ugly. These are damaged youth. Bogosian captures the ugliness engendered by a void of cultural stimuli, and the accompanying disaffection and ennui of Gen X white youth.

[Patrick King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this modernized edition was bittersweet, because while I am pleased to discover that the play itself continues to thrive with the passage of time, the small updates (usage of cell phones, cultural/musical references) left me longing for the simplicity of the analog days. To be honest, it's hard for me to believe that a group of today's teenagers would even gather in this type of setting anymore. Clearly, the story resonates with audiences because the issues presented by Bogosian are timeless and well-communicated.

On a side note, the presentation of this volume is worth a remark- the cover artwork (the play's original poster) and accompanying essays/info add a lot to the investment. I'm glad to have this in my bookcase.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh.
Sometimes, I read stuff that makes me think that in high school, I would’ve loved telling people how great it was. But reading it as an adult, it just leaves me feeling frustrated and irritated with all the characters.
What a bunch of whiny, first-world-problem-having people. Ugh.
And the weird death at the end feels tacked on and unimportant.

[Shiana Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, it just isn't my kind of play or my style of writing. It definitely is a good depiction of the suburbs in the 90s and 2000's and reminded me of some of the people I knew in middle school and what I imagine they are like now.

[Ashley Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5 stars

I discovered this movie in my teens and watched it a ton, not knowing it was originally a play. I love that they stayed true to the original story. Although it can be bleak this is such a good and honest commentary on middle America.

[cyrus · Rating 2 out of 5]

ultimately well written, but tim puts a bad taste in my mouth. something about how his violent racism is barely commented on is really odd. i like sooze and bee bee, plus pony. maybe seeing this staged would help matters. ebogo, you are an odd one.

[Jimilee Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoy his writing. Very raw and holds nothing back. Very easy to get sucked into the ride.

[Kayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not my cup of tea. Then again, what do you expect from a play with characters you're supposed to hate?

[Jo O'Donnell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute garbage. The only impressive thing about this play is that the Gen-X characters are somehow even more insufferable with the knowledge that the author is a Baby Boomer.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[Litbitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-4 stars; a good representation of working class, White suburban life in the 80s. Read it with my Sunday acting by former BFA actors COVID group, which has been delightful for this quitter.

[Arpita]

I read this really quick just so I can get another book on my list. I'll give a serious reviwe some other day.

[Aspen Haase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting play. Reminds me a lot of Adam raps work!
Love sooze, she was a fun character

[Daniella D.]

Loved the movie and loved this too.

[columbosunday · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a shocking accurate portrayal of suburban life, as I know it. I know people exactly like the characters in this play. God.

[Miguelangelo Hexylvania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big fan of this in every medium.

[Siarra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why are plays like this 🙃🙃🙃

Over the top, trying too hard to be edgy, incredibly unrealistic female characters. No pay off, no resolution.

[Reyna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh man

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The play is set outside of a seven eleven on a street corner. It features lost youth of this modern age. They drink, listen to loud music, and make trouble. They have existential problems. There is rehab, there is a pop star friend, a famous friend. The relationship with fame is interesting. Most of the kids seem to regard themselves as failures. Either that or they're in denial, or they don't give a shit. The alienation which is spoken of and when spoken of seems self-indulgent and petty, grows to very real and dangerous levels as the play proceeds.

Jeff seems like a character I could play. He has a monologue about the futility of it all that I am considering working with for an audition piece. He later has an "epiphany" which seems hauntingly familiar to me. I am always searching for and sometimes finding these "epiphanies." But what do they really amount to? They don't turn into anything. They aren't manifest. They are just my own little shitty twisting around in my own little shitty head.

The play also features lies, betrayal, sex, and ego. And racism. It's a good mussy tangle of human reality from the point of view of us privileged asshole kids who don't know enough about what life is or what it means for something to be sacred. It also has a fake-out ending that gets pretty real. It's funny, and it's close to home, and it's sad.