Some strong performances in slacker drama

Hella Fresh Theatre's

California Redemption Value

, a sort of dysfunctional family dramedy set in the height of the slacker era, mid-1990s, calls to mind similar work about semi-feral American kids from around the same time. There's Kenneth Lonergan's play

This Is Our Youth

, Harmony Korine's film

Kids

, and most of grunge.

The setting is Los Angeles, and based on director/playwright/Hella Fresh founder John Rosenberg's own family. But aside from the title (which refers to a charge on recyclable drink containers levied by the state; consumers can turn them in and get their money back) and mentions of a few landmarks, this same disaffection and rootlessness is right at home occupying couches anywhere between both coasts.

Rosenberg's battered sofas, barely held together by divorced mother Birdie (Julie Chapin), a drama teacher, sag under the weight of her former student Lou (Danny Donnelly), daughter Annie (Anna Flynn-Meketon), Annie's friend Sean (Darren Johnson), and occasional visits home by her sketchy college-student son Michael (Kevin Chick). No one in the cobbled-together household besides Birdie has a job, no one besides Birdie seems to care, and even she, an erratic, flighty Pollyanna with a potty mouth, only cares once in a while.

Rosenberg's script sags in places, too. While an enjoyable enough - if drifting - two-act play, it could easily be a tight, forward-moving one-act. There's too much coy hinting at revelations to come, entire scenes that feel as though they were written for the sole purpose of establishing character relationships. And the raw danger that accompanies watching the barely legal on their own turf, getting wasted, stealing, lying, taunting the very adults who allow them such luxuries, knowing there won't be any consequences, fizzles by the second act from overexposition. In their lives, as Annie tells her brother, "saying it is as good as doing it," but onstage, doing whatever it is, even if it means not doing or saying too much, is better.

Though Chapin is clearly out of her league, there are some fine performances here, all by newcomers. Flynn-Meketon, a Temple freshman, and Chick, who somehow found his way to Kensington by way of Iowa and Argentina, are the kinds of young actors who bode well for the future of Philly's indie theater scene, should they decide to stay. They, and, to a lesser extent, Johnson and Donnelly, keep their characters just outside familiar L.A. vapidity; they're not empty vessels, so much as vessels still hoping to be filled.

Playing at Papermill Theater, 2825 Ormes St., Philadelphia. Through Sunday, Feb 6. Tickets: $10. Information: 510-292-6403; www.californiaredemptionvalue.blogspot.com

EndText