Prior to hearing about Eliya Smith’s new play receiving its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company, I was unfamiliar with the concept of grief camps. The idea of a camp where children and teenagers can work through bereavement issues after suffering terrible losses sounded like a potent catalyst for affecting drama. Unfortunately, Grief Camp does nothing fruitful with the concept, providing aimless quirkiness instead of the emotion that might make us feel anything but boredom. By the time this seemingly interminable evening is over, you’ll feel as if you’ve spent an entire summer watching it.
In a recent interview, the 27-year-old playwright talks about having watched TikTok videos posted by young grief camp attendees. She adds that their comments about the emotional pain they were suffering were very moving, but that if she had tried to emulate them it “would have felt like bad writing.”
Well, watching those videos would have been a far more edifying experience than what transpires onstage. Smith proves so intent on avoiding anything so obvious as having the play’s young characters talking about their grief that instead she has them talking about nothing at all. Well, not really nothing, since masturbation comes up a lot, and there’s much discussion about a stuffed toy dinosaur. The result is that Grief Camp provides next to nothing in the form of recognizable drama, other than tangible proof as to how slowly time can move.
Apparently having watched too many episodes of M*A*S*H, the playwright begins many of her scenes with a loudspeaker broadcasting a horribly out-of-tune reveille, followed by announcements from the unseen camp director (voiced by Danny Wolohan) that inevitably begin with weather reports, breakfast menu items, and such cheery announcements as “Welcome to another perfect day from which to begin the rest of your lives!” Later on, the messages practically become surreal, such as a nonsensical monologue revolving around Alexander Graham Bell.
The characters include six teen campers about whom you come learn practically nothing. The main exception is Olivia (a vibrant Renee-Nicole Powell), whose repeated, none-too-subtle come-ons to camp counselor Cade (Jack DiFalco, excellent) provide the nearest thing to a discernible narrative and which don’t prove particularly interesting. There’s also a guitar player (Alden Harris-McCoy) who seems to have wandered in from a Sam Shepard play and whom the campers lambast for his repeated playing of a musical version of the Jewish prayer “Mi Shebeirach.”
Grief Camp proves so elliptical and amorphous in its writing that it seems to drift along without providing anything to hold your attention, unless you’re riveted by the sight of young people fighting to get into their cabin’s sole bathroom. While some of the dialogue resonates in the sort of teenagerish way that also proves convincing in John Proctor Is the Villain (youngsters seem to be having a moment on our stages right now), anyone of drinking age will be hard-pressed to find it compelling.
Veteran director Les Waters, no stranger to this sort of material, stages the proceedings with authority and elicits believable performances from the young ensemble that also includes Arjun Athalye, Grace Brennan, Dominic Gross, Maaike Laanstra-Corn, and Lark White. But the production’s standout turns out to be Louisa Thompson’s set design for the large wooden cabin in which all the action takes place. Unfortunately, it proves sturdier than the play.
Grief Camp opened April 22, 2025 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through May 11. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
