A REVIEW OF DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL’S Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen
MAY 9, 2025
Let’s talk about performative appreciation in theater. Where groupthink crowds out actual discernment. Where certain anxious individuals in the audience feel a thousand ears are listening to their every utterance, and therefore feel compelled to amplify every utterance. Where 'success' is propped up by a perfunctory rally of loyal friends clapping, whooping, and giggling not for the work itself but to uphold the fragile illusion that showing up is the same as showing talent. In other words, one could burp on stage and would receive the same level of enthusiasm as Zoe Calwell in Masterclass. Performative appreciation in theater is becoming an epidemic… particularly among young people…and particularly in New York City.
So…did David Dean Bottrell’s one-man show require performative appreciation to “succeed”?
When I saw David’s Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen at the Pangea in the East Village last night, there were two female-presenting audience members sitting three tables away. Let’s call them Gasp and Giggle. At every turn, Gasp and Giggle reacted to David’s 90-minute monologue as if they were band leaders hired to conduct our reactions. Giggle giggled too loudly at too many moments. Gasp gasped disproportionately to some shock we weren’t aware of – like she was watching a jump-scare in a horror film while the rest of us were appreciating an ironic turn of events. I’ve a strong feeling Gasp and Giggle’s performative reactions were expected and encouraged at the shows they usually attended. At this show, however, I and those around me glanced over to Gasp and Giggle with annoyance. Why?
Any dishonest reaction from the audience could only be incongruous to the utterly raw, vulnerable honesty of David’s words.
David Bottrell’s “Teenage Wasteland: Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen is a gorgeous, moving, hysterical deep dive into mid-Western pubescence. He grew up in small factory town whose claim to fame was producing the most meat-slicers, populated by the type of small-town thinking and religious fanaticism that usually accompanies the sort of people who take pride in that sort of thing. Could David come out of the closet? No. Could he have an intelligent, thoughtful discussion with anyone? No. Did David present the minutia of the small-town hypocrisies and delicious idiosyncrasies with humor? Absolutely.
I appreciated the KIND of comedy David presented in his show. I’ve grown tired of the bitter hyperbole so many solo shows use to maximize the traumatic impact of their childhood. You usually can depend on a hyper-fixation on a single slur becoming a major scar that never heals for the rest of their adult lives. Here, like in The Wonder Years, Stand By Me, or Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, David doesn’t deny pain or erase past wrongs, but he filters them through maturity, grace, and a beautifully benevolent sense of humor. David’s stories shaped him, but he is not still trapped in the pit of his past. David’s memories are like a burnt-orange quilt that wraps warmly around the shoulders of his present - and by extension ours. David Bottrell is a gay New York writer by trade, but in his heart he’s Garrison Keillor. Love, filtering his past, is the strength of Teenage Wasteland.
I also very much appreciated the construction of his stories. Like miniature movies, each story David tells has a brilliantly unique setup, a hysterical escalation, a painfully relatable point of no return, a surprising ‘magic key,’ and a deliciously satisfying conclusion. But then comes my favorite moment - the button of pathos - when suddenly and gorgeously we’re transitioned back to our 2025 David Bottrell. We see how the story fashioned the man telling it. The realization that, for all the juicy comedy, David’s past cast dark shadows and rays of light onto his present self, had me constantly drying my eyes. David has an inexplicable genius to make details that are so distinct to his childhood feel so entirely germane to us as adults.
While writing this review, I found it difficult to call David Bottrell anything but David. His stories were so personal and intimate that by the end we felt like we’d spent a sunny afternoon in Central Park chatting with a friend. We laughed. We cried. We reflected. We hugged. We felt like better, more connected humans after those 90 minutes.
With that, I won’t try to explain his show further. Just go experience it. And, c’mon kids: drop the performative reactions. Let Teenage Wasteland hit you in a personal, private way, and allow the honest revelation of his life inspire equally honest reactions. This special show deserves that.
David will be performing in Palm Springs (MAY 17), San Francisco (MAY 27), Los Angeles (MAY 22-23), Cape Cod (JUNE 18), Nantucket (JUNE 20), Hyannis (TBD), and returning to New York (JULY 16). More dates to be announced.
To all my San Francisco friends and family, on May 27th please get yourself to the Eclectic Box Performing Arts Theater right near the 16th Street Bart Station.