Quentin Maré and Lilli Stein Photo by Andrea Reese

Schooled never actually leaves Manhattan for sunny La-La Land, where narcissistic and megalomaniacal players are (and often have been) easy targets for theatrical jabs. Rather, it focuses its lens on two young students at one of those expensive, elite screenwriting programs where talent is a given but where the road to a successful career is considerably more elusive.

Claire (Lilli Stein) and Jake (Stephen Friedrich), both in their early 20s, are the top students of Andrew Owens (Quentin Maré) a middle-aged alcoholic screenwriter who has not been able to sell a script in quite some time —hence, the teaching job. The two students are a couple, about to take the plunge and move in together, but that doesn't stop them from stepping all over one another to gain Andrew's attention and a chance at winning a grant to fund one of their projects.

The play is largely Claire's story, and we watch nervously as she naively goes along with Andrew's invitation to meet regularly to discuss her work at the West Village bar where he is a habitué. While she appears to be quite vulnerable to the misogynistic landscape that both Jake and Andrew freely inhabit (they ignore her in order to converse with one another, and both treat her rather condescendingly), she manages to more than hold her own. As the play progresses, and especially as Andrew makes it understood that the grant is Claire's to have, provided she gives in to his sexual demands, we begin to wonder who is the spider and who the fly.

Notwithstanding the play's serious theme about the price we are led to believe we must pay in order to get a shot at the brass ring, the dialog is often quite funny in a snarky sort of way, and all three actors, under James Kautz's direction, do splendidly with their roles. As a final touch of irony, and despite the characters' outward efforts at distancing themselves from the emotional upheaval that is part and parcel of their chosen profession, it turns out that they all are in love with fickle Hollywood and its phony glitz after all.

Schooled
part of the New York International Fringe Festival 2015
Tickets online, venue information, and current Performance Schedule: www.fringenyc.org