DETROIT, Mich.–The idea of a play based on a singer and album one has never heard of is not a promising start to an evening. But Girlfriend, based on Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album of the same name is a surprise.

It helps a lot that The Detroit Pubic Theatre cast two young first-rate actors to play the two-hander play about two high school seniors, both gay, one of whom is ambivalent about his sexuality.

Sam Hamashima plays Mike, a jock-ish senior headed out of his small town in Nebraska to play baseball and attend college in Lincoln at The University of Nebraska. He claims to have a girlfriend, in the next town over, but his attentions are focused on Will, played by Peter Scattini. Will is not ambivalent about his sexuality, though he seems to be so about everything else. Indeed, while he is cute and tells interesting self-conscious stories, he doesn’t seem to have any specific interests or vocation outside of having a massive crush on Mike.

Girlfriend, the album, peaked at #100 on the Billboard200 album chart. The title track hit #4 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. “Divine Intervention” hit #23 on the Modern Rock chart.^[

The book, written by Todd Almond, makes the audience feel like we are standing on the other side of a two-way mirror watching these two young men circle one another, out on a date at the movies, sitting in the park, driving in Mike’s car.

The arc of the story is finding out of Mike is going to come out. Hamashima does an excellent job of conveying a kind of jovial fear of being found out by his small-town jock friends. And Scattini is very convincing as the gay boy in a small town who has been tormented and wedgied so many tomes for his sensitive nature and gay identity that he is toughened and pretty impervious to what other people may think about his sexual identity.

There was a curious thing happening in the intimate DPT space. When there is a scene in which Mike dodges being found out while he is enjoying Will’s company, there were audible groans and “awwws.” I just note this because it was unexpected, as were a couple of instances in which Scattini broke the fourth wall.

If you have ever driven across country, or through rural America, you know the kinds of towns where you can pretty much hear the teenagers screaming for an escape as you drive through Main Street. One can only imagine how difficult it is to be a gay teenager in a town where the churches out-number the drug and grocery stores combined. Almond’s book captures this quite nicely.

Almond’s writing and Joe Bailey’s direction and casting turn what could be a throw-away idea into a very compact, compelling story. And while Sweet’s music is not exactly mainstream for a lot of people, it has a sweet, soft-rock quality that may make those not familiar with his work check out more of his albums.

The set is simple, a desk for Will when in his in his room, and a simple versatile area in which the boys are in a movie theatre, the sidelines of the baseball field and in Mike’s car. The excellent band, playing Sweet’s music is set behind and above the actors.

Though the story written by Almond is about two young gay men, the album does not speak to gay relationships at all. Sweet is a heterosexual writing about those relationships. It is a compelling and ironic device to center the music on two gay men, driving home the point of view that relationships are relationships. Even in Nebraska.

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