We left the theatre. It was dark, rainy. A late-spring night in Chicago. Rebecca Rugg, a brilliant dramaturge, and one of the best all-around theatre workers out there, said, “Now, we both know I’m predisposed to the ladies, so I don’t want my judgment clouded by that, but that girl was extraordinary, right?” Rebecca was referring to the eighteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson, who was starring, along with Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin, in the Steppenwolf Theatre production of Kenneth Lonergan’s 1996 play, “This Is Our Youth,” directed by Anna D. Shapiro. (The Chicago cast has been transplanted to the Cort Theatre on Broadway, where the show, now in previews, will run through early January.) Hyped on our shared fandom, I said, “Wouldn’t Tavi be good playing a just-starting-out Deborah Harry, during the Blondie years?” Rebecca said, “Not bad! The whole style-and-star thing. Keep going!”
With this show, Gevinson is making her New York stage début, following what seems like an already full career: founder, at age eleven, of the smart Style Rookie fashion blog, and, later, of Rookie magazine; independent-minded role model to any number of girls, young and old, interested in building their own empire. In Lonergan’s two-act piece, she plays Jessica Goldman, an intelligent young woman in a world of somewhat lost teen-age souls; since she’s the only girl in this particular world, Jessica’s also the object of standard sexual speculation. Still she, like Tavi, wears boy fantasy as lightly as she can; she only wants to connect. Whether standing stock still or dancing awkwardly, jubilantly, with the beautifully cast Cera—the trio of actors play off one another brilliantly—Gevinson claimed not just our attention but also our interest. From all available evidence, Gevinson, who has hitherto had small film roles, is a star being shaped by her own will to be seen and heard—but now as someone other than herself. ♦