‘The Grown-Ups’ a fitting amalgam of hope and looming chaos for our moment

A summer camp tucked away in the forest. With the campers in bed, counselors huddle around the campfire, cracking open some beers, roasting s’mores and hashing out their worldviews and vision for the future.

Nature is particularly therapeutic these days in its ability to force us to unplug. The world back home can feel so far away, our problems out of sight and, thus, out of mind.

Until they’re not.

Big Idea Theatre’s “The Grown-Ups” will resonate with anyone spending their work week trapped in a nauseating doom-scroll and their weekend off the grid in Yosemite or Lake Tahoe’s forests. It’s a restyling of the avant-garde 2021 play by Simon Henriques and Skylar Fox that toyed joyfully with mise-en-scène as it wrestled with the complex, raw emotions of that era.

The original production took place at a “secret Brooklyn location” (read: a backyard in Greenpoint) from July to November 2021. Each night’s eight lucky audience members had to file through an apartment to reach the “theater,” which was essentially a firepit where the cast sat among the guests as they performed — often actually making s’mores for the viewers.

While Big Idea Theatre is cozy, it’s not quite that intimate. Still, theatergoers should favor the front row for this production, where they will find they are at an equal footing with the cast and eye-level when the actors are seated around the campfire. While one can only imagine how it felt for the original production’s players to perform with a New York Times critic peering across a firepit, the worst this cast had to deal with was almost tripping over this reviewer’s comically long legs once or twice.

New hire Cassie, deftly portrayed by Alexis Pinkney, finds herself among a tight-knit trio of counselors: Becca, Lucas and Maeve (Brittney Poole, Bryce Huckaby and McKenna Sennett respectively). She’s also the only person of color. As she slowly forms bonds with these new friends, the overly-dutiful camp director Aidan (Connor Dick) flutters in and out with tasks, news and sometimes the counselors’ phones.

The counselors wrestle with many issues of our era: a camp they all love which just the year before had a racist name; tense discourse over fairness and equity; and systems that clearly benefit certain, more privileged groups.

Meanwhile, it slowly, eerily begins to dawn on the audience that something else is amiss — that a threat looms outside of this forest perhaps far greater than what these young leaders can handle.

Can they protect the children?

Can they protect themselves?

While theatergoers can’t quite grab a fold-out chair and join the counselors at the fire in this production, the open, minimalist staging and decor bring a warmth and ease that pulls one in immediately. What more do you need than the crackle of a campfire, its embers blinking slowly, with intention, like a firefly in the Midwest?

What I like most about this production is the obvious rapport cemented among the small cast. While they are still quite young, I cannot help but think of how formative 2021 must have been for each of them, and how that may translate into their interpretations of the characters.

In the summer of 2021, our country wasn’t just dealing with the trauma of isolation endured over the course of an ongoing, deadly pandemic, we were also mulling over questions on the strengths of our institutions after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and fighting to grow from a racial reconciliation that landed the National Guard in our city.

Statues fell. Windows shattered. No one knew what was to come next. Imagine being in your late teens or early 20s as you struggle not just to enter the real world, but also to make sense of it.

The script can at times feel like the playwrights bit off more than they could chew, but the team at Big Idea manages it well, and I just love to see a community theater taking chances. (Also, didn’t it feel like we all had bitten off more than we could chew in 2021?)

The correlations to California in 2025 are incredibly — and unfortunately — strong, which is why Sacramento should be ecstatic to be treated this summer with the play that Time Out New York called “the coolest new play you probably can’t see.”

“The Grown-Ups” plays through June 28 at Big Idea Theatre.