ASIDE from the rave reviews and A-list cast, one thing really motivated 24-year-old Lindsay Moore to drop $50 on a ticket for the off-Broadway hit ‘Hurlyburly.”
‘Ethan Hawke’s butt,” says Moore, ‘was a big selling point. I was very impressed by it.”
Apparently, Hawke’s much-remarked-upon mooning – he’s lying face-down on a couch with his boxers tugged down as the audience files in – carries, for some, more weight than the dramatic material.
‘Ethan Hawke, in his boxer shorts, five inches in front of me!” gushes Orly Trieber, 26, who says she’s been to the theater ‘less than five times in my life.”
‘It was fantastic,” she continues, adding that not just Hawke’s half-exposed crack but his actual performance ‘gave me a renewed appreciation for his talent.”
Since opening at the tiny, 200-seat Acorn Theater one month ago, David Rabe’s ‘Hurlyburly” – starring Hawke, Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton and Bobby Cannavale – has sold out its entire run (which has been extended two weeks past its original March 5 close; the play probably will move to a larger venue) and become the equivalent of a must-see rock show for Gen Y and Xers.
Trieber says the night she saw “Hurlyburly,” “the audience was split – half were people in their late 40s and 50s, and then there were a whole bunch of hipsters, which was kind of unexpected.”
Almost every day, kids camp out in the theater lobby waiting for cancellations. Tickets are begged for on Craigslist and auctioned on eBay. Blogs like ProductShopNYC, Gawker and Gothamist – which almost never cover the theater – have all excitedly reviewed or commented on the production.
Even young Hollywood hipsters Wes Anderson, Billy Crudup and Sam Rockwell have seen it.
“To a certain segment of Gen Xers, Parker is their indie movie queen,” says Gothamist editor Jen Chung.
And Hawke, for better or worse, became something of a goateed Gen X poster boy with movies like “Before Sunrise” and “Reality Bites.”
“People always see Parker in the East Village with Ryan Adams, or see Ethan walking around – they’re like these fixtures downtown,” Chung continues. “Going to see them in a very small theater is a way to bask in their glory.”
As frivolous as that may sound, even Posey understands the allure.
“It reminds me of when I saw ‘Burn This!’ on Broadway with John Malkovich,” says Posey. “It was like, John Malkovich! On Broadway! He was my age when I saw that play. I know that excitement you feel – in a small house, that’s sold out, with a great cast.”
Yet almost everyone on both sides agrees the main draw is the story itself – a distinctly ’80s piece about a bunch of coked-up Hollywood bottom feeders trying to figure out what it is to be truly successful men, all the while carelessly passing around the women in their lives.
“I think it’s a young person’s play,” says 41-year-old director Scott Elliott.
The material “taps into things that Gen Xers remember, and has well-developed, multi-dimensional characters,” says Elliott.
For example: Hamilton’s lackadaisical Mickey dresses like an extra from “Miami Vice,” even going sockless in loafers. Posey’s hair looks permed. The cable remote is an unwieldy box connected to the TV with a wire. (Favored viewing: “The Smurfs.”)
Vinyl albums by the Thompson Twins and other ’80s-centric bands are strewn about; 1981’s “Under Pressure,” by David Bowie and Queen, closes the show.
“There is definitely a sex/drugs/synth-pop element,” says Hamilton (probably best known to Gen Xers for his role in 1995’s post- collegiate-angstploitation indie “Kicking and Screaming”).
He adds that the production’s excruciating attention to detail, with all its kitschy ’80s signifiers, hits the right tone with disaffected Gen Xers.
“With this generation, it’s a very different kind of nostalgia than the baby boomers have,” he says. “It’s ironic and postmodern. And so much of ’80s music is having a resurgence, especially the younger bands in New York that are drawing from that era. This is the theatrical version.”
But for fans like Moore and Trieber, the “Hurlyburly” experience – Hawke’s half-exposed backside notwithstanding – is more visceral.
“The play deals with escaping your reality, hating your job and being unable to findp eople who are caring and real,” Trieber says. “So it’s perfect for people in their 20s and 30s.”
