Review: ATHENA at 21ten Theatre

ATHENA, now running at the tiny but mighty 21ten Theatre, is a keenly observed comedy about two high schoolers training for the Junior Olympics. They are, by turns, practice partners, rivals, and almost-friends. Gracie Gardner's play understands that the last of those is by far the most difficult challenge.

Mary Wallace (played by Isabel McTighe) is the classic overachiever: studious, responsible, with supportive and trusting parents. Fencing is one more thing to excel at, with hopes of college recruitment on the horizon. Athena (Alannah Patrice Walke) has had a harder road: a missing mom, an unsupportive dad, and a sport that functions as a lifeline. The fencing club is somewhere to go after school and a community that Athena hasn’t found anywhere else.

Both are highly competitive, both are confident, and both are teenagers, which means crushing self-doubt arrives frequently, without warning or mercy. Mary Wallace seems like the more adult one, but lives a very sheltered life and falls apart when losing. Athena swings between jaded worldliness and full-on petulant teenager, sometimes within the same sentence. Neither is quite as together as they would like, or would like each other, to think. The fencing practice serves double duty: literal training for competition, and figuring out how to relate to another person.

Alannah Patrice Walker and Isabel McTighe are both very good. If you’ve ever been a teenager, you will recognize parts of yourself in one or, more likely, both of their characters. I don’t know much about fencing, but the physical part of the show was a highlight. The final match, when the two actually compete, is a legit nailbiter.

Overall, ATHENA is a nuanced, funny, and true-to-life portrait of two young people trying to find their place in the world. It's well worth a visit to 21ten Theatre to see it. Details and tickets here.