There’s a story from ancient Greece about a man who was caught burning down a temple. When they asked him why he did it, he said he wanted to be famous, but he knew he wasn’t capable of achieving anything worthwhile. Substitute a more fashionable contemporary act of violence – something involving firearms or explosives – and the story could be lifted from tomorrow’s headlines. Of course, in the intervening millennia, we’ve added a few wrinkles of our own. Like the youth of the perpetrators.

  Open Fire by Howard Burman, recently done at Loyola by an impressive quintet of undergrads, is subtitled "a Theatrical Evocation of the Alienation of American Youth." The situation: four high school students are plotting to attack their peers during the senior prom with an arsenal of assault rifles, homemade bombs, etc. They have coerced a fifth student into documenting their conspiracy on video. They want to leave a record: final words to their mothers, justifications, taunts. In fact, the leaving of the record seems more important than the act of violence itself. They go off on tirades about revenge, but essentially, like that Athenian miscreant of long ago, they want to call attention to themselves. They want to be celebrities, albeit posthumous ones. Lacking the Greek’s brash candor about his motives, however, they intone a shrill chorus of complaints about class bullies and their parents’ lack of understanding. Then, sensing these laments do not truly convince, they retreat into a enigmatic, inexplicable defiance: "You’ll never know why we did it!" Perhaps not, but one senses it is the excitement of transgression, of posturing in outrageous costumes – a chic nihilism lifted from music videos – that is speeding up their collective pulse. They are playing a game, and they’ve gotten carried away by it.

  Obviously, Open Fire was intended as a very "now" kind of event. And in many ways (thanks to the fine-tuned, inventive direction of Joanne Gordon) it succeeded. The simple, effective set (by Georgia Gresham) consisted of a tall, weathered chain-link fence, panels of corrugated metal and a large, black oil drum. Urban decay with a hint of a schoolyard – or prison yard. In glaring contrast, there were two bunches of brightly colored balloons straining upward on their strings. These served as emblems of an imagined prelapsarian adolescence from the 1950s. In fact, the drama begins with a sardonic nod to that nostalgia-soaked vision of high school. A mirror ball spins, the Platters sing "My Prayer," a girl in a prom gown and elbow length gloves fills a balloon with helium and presents it to her tuxedo-clad beau. They dance. An African-American couple, also in formal wear, joins them. But when the song reaches "for as long as we live …," gunfire drowns the music. These kids are actually a bloodthirsty gang of four, and the prom, which they are about to attend, is ground zero for their intended massacre.

  Now, as I said, one of the chief points about Open Fire is the lack of a valid motive for the crime. We’re not dealing with the usual criminal element here. "It’s a metaphor, you idiot," one of the plotters shouts at another early on, and a hip, literate, thrill-kill lingo, mixing street talk and cultural savvy, is insisted on throughout.

  While motivation is vague, there is a tension built on character dynamic in the group – this one is the brilliant, twisted leader; this one is the gay kid who got picked on; that one is the soft-hearted "normal" girl, in over her head. Though these dynamics propel the action (such as it is), they never give a hint as to the psychological well-springs of the characters. The lacuna is deliberate. Open Fire is actually more of a provocation than an evocation.

  In fact, Open Fire can be seen as a study of style. On one level, the characters reject the "old conventional teen style" of proms, romantic ballads and dress codes for the mass-market neo-fascism of black boots, shaved heads and high-decibel rage. On another level, the production itself owes its success largely to stylishness; as in the remarkable and visually-striking monologues by characters who loomed over the audience in giant video close-ups. This was most apparent in the long final fugue of wild drumming that was so exhilarating and well coordinated, one felt quite certain all nasty impulses had been sublimated and disaster averted (except, perhaps, for the poor child who remained behind to blow her brains out).

  Much credit is due to Alex Wesley, Dasen Kendrick, Becky Johnson, Jason Picus and Joshua Duplantier for their poised and engaging performances in this study of forbidden games.