'Good' enough for off-Broadway

By all accounts, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's "Good Boys and True" is already a hit. A new production -- not the solid, respectable world premiere that opened Friday at Steppenwolf Theatre --opens at New York's Second Stage Theatre in the spring.

But watching this drama about a sex scandal that rocks an elite Washington, D.C. prep school, one can't help thinking that television, not off-Broadway, might make a more suitable medium.

With its ripped-from-the-headlines plot, convenient flashbacks, Dr. Phil-style dialogue and familiar characters (articulate, angsty teenagers; a reasoned and devoted mother; her sardonic single sister; absent yet imposing father), "Good Boys" plays like a made-for-TV movie -- too refined for the CW, not refined enough for HBO, but perfect for a Big Three network.

Issues of class, conformity, corruption and culpability underscore the play, directed in workmanlike fashion by Pam MacKinnon, which unfolds at the fictional St. Joseph's, an incubator for future "masters of the universe" whose privileged, often thuggish student body has a distinctive disregard for anyone Not Our Kind. It centers on Ivy League-bound Brandon Hardy (Stephen Louis Grush), a bright, closeted student-athlete from a wealthy, respected family struggling with the golden boy mantle. The discovery of a tape depicting graphic sex between a boy resembling him and a teenage girl prompts Coach Shea (an intriguingly ambivalent John Procaccino) to enlist Brandon's mother Elizabeth (Martha Lavey) in an attempt to quell the situation before it derails the young man's future.

Also caught up in the scandal are Brandon's schoolmate Justin (a wry, self-aware Tim Rock as the vulnerable best friend); Elizabeth's school teacher sister Maddy (Kelli Simpkins), whose sweeping generalizations of St. Joe's boys hit close to home, and Cheryl (played with quiet dignity by the intuitive Kelly O'Sullivan), a hard-working girl from the wrong side of the tracks who becomes the unwitting victim of Brandon's struggle to bury his self-doubts and sustain his denial.

In a strong cast, the standouts are Grush and Lavey, who are credible even when the dialogue isn't. Grush's arrogant charmer wears entitlement easily and his perfectly pitched performance is an achingly honest picture of anguish, confusion and self-loathing. The willowy Lavey -- a model of subtle strength and decency -- is rock solid as a mother trying to reconcile the boy she knew with the young man he's become. Ultimately, the story is as much hers as it is Brandon's. If cruelty is inherited, so is compassion. It's from her, that this boy's righteousness comes.

"Good Boys and True"

Rating: 2½ stars

Location: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago

Times: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays; 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Feb. 16 (Sunday evening performances through Jan. 20 only), also 2 p.m. Jan. 23, 30 and Feb. 6

Running time: About two hours, including intermission

Parking: Paid lot adjacent to theater

Tickets: $20-$68

Box office: (312) 335-1650 or www.steppenwolf.org

Audience: For older teens and adults