Written by an adolescent, Dry Land solves a dire problem in the life of an adolescent today and how it affects her friendship with a peer. This play seems meant to appeal especially to a young audience with dialogue and attitudes typical of contemporary adolescents. It may also seek adult understanding of, and even sympathy for, the adolescents it portrays. Quite clear, though, is that the writer purports to make a splash with a horror scene: a painful abortion on a locker-room floor. Talented Ellie McCaw’s Amy, a Florida high school senior and leader on her swim team, is dying to continue in that vein in college. Only something else -- the result of a sexual “giving in” -- has to die first. She enlists help from teammate Esther (Jordan Boyer), conflicted but, as a newcomer, anxious to cement a friendship. She’ll prove a better choice than Olivia Siegel’s Reba, a longtime teammate with her own challenges. Esther’s desire for friendship, to fit in, surprisingly becomes the primary story. It’s enhanced by her meeting with Joshua James’s appealing FSU freshman who knew Amy and her team in high school. (He’s the only sign that the school has jocks as well as female athletes.) His own comments on sexual experiences affect how Esther feels about her relationship with Amy. Initial scenes, in which Amy gets Esther to punch her in the abdomen, prepare for the gruesome abortion. Richard Levine plays an efficient janitor, mainly around to clean up and give the girls time to change for their final scene. (It may add a few moments of suspense about whether Esther hasn’t destroyed “the evidence” enough to allay suspicions of what happened that might be reported.) For a realistic drama, there’s remarkably little aftermath of the naturalistic aborting. Another incongruity: the set is lined with real metal lockers and there seems to be a functioning toilet in a single stall. But there’s no washbowl or any sign of soap and water or chemical wash and, should there be even one shower, it must be outside at the pool. Still, none of the girls come in wet from swimming or showering nor with towels if they’ve dried off outside the locker room. Is this to indicate the title of the play is a metaphor for that room? Also, all three girls wear varying kinds of off-the-rack swim suits, unlike most competitive swimmers. Urbanite’s reputation for technical proficiency suffers, but at least, Dry Land’s lighting seems authentic. If there is any challenge unquestionably met, it’s that director Summer Dawn Wallace has deeply involved her actors in projecting concerns about getting through adolescence today. In fact, they rise above motivations the playwright has given them.
