Dada Teen Musical: The Play
Central Work's Provocative World Premiere
By: Victor Cordell - Oct 24, 2025
Dank is cool. Solid is a favor. Legit is approval. Except when they’re something else. What? If you need an explanation, you’re clearly not Gen Z. If you’re a theater goer from another generation, you may or may not need a translator for Dada Teen Musical: The Play, but you are certainly in for a delightful, provocative, unsettling, and often hilarious change of pace with teens at its center. Characters will seem familiar, and their characters masterfully unfold as performed by an excellent cast of four.
Annabel is a high school senior whose mantra is “Screw my Yale-obsessed family. I’m going to Harvard.” Poor thing, living with such limitations. An overachiever feeling that she needs some icing on her Harvard application, she decides to create a distinctive show to be performed for her high school’s annual theater performance. How about a 12-hour Smell of the Sound of Music, a Dadaist version of the musical? Why Dada? Because, while the Dada art movement rejected logic, linearity (which becomes a recurring theme in the play), and traditional values, it didn’t advocate anything specific. So Annabel’s alteration could be whatever, and she starts by changing the von Trapp family from people to alligators!
To pull this off, she needs serious support. Enter classmate Tyler, who is so privileged that he makes Annabel seem working class. We quickly learn that the trouble with Tyler is that while he has endless resources and the charisma to attract a large following, he’s also a pathological liar. His far-fetched falsehoods serve for personal aggrandizement, and plausible lies cut from whole cloth are meant to hurt others, often accusing them of the very evil that he’s committed. Thus, dealing with him is iffy. He has also been caught cheating on a test and crossed swords with the school’s administration. The teacher sponsor for the annual play, Mr. Dorfman, doesn’t want Tyler to perform in it, though Tyler’s condition for the financial and student body support that he can deliver is that he play the lead, Captain Alligator von Trapp.
The final addition to the motley mix is the antisocial, gothic Mariah, a proto-punk, Ramones-obsessed bass guitar player. Her mode of dress is black leather, against Annabel’s bright and stylish look. Though the two are an odd couple who have never gotten to know one another over many years, someone with music cred is needed as music director. Mariah fits the bill as well as anyone around and agrees to take part.
So, where does this all go? At one level, it is a saga of two talented, coddled, self-indulgent teens behaving badly, and the loner, seemingly maladjusted one doing just fine.
Jacob Henrie-Naffaa raves on and on as the high energy motormouth Tyler who speaks almost exclusively in Gen Z code. But he has yet more problematic traits. In addition to compulsive and fanciful lying, he manipulates and feels the need to dominate, which extends to his disrespect for teachers and administrators. He even has the wherewithal to trap Mr. Dorfman, played with great emotion by Central Works stalwart Alan Coyne, who adeptly captures the teacher’s conflicts. Although the teacher possesses the legitimate power of position, he is placed in vulnerable situations by the devious Tyler and often has to give in, against his ever-eroding principles.
Zoe Chien’s Annabel is like a Valley Girl with aspirations – bouncy, sociable, attention getting, but always with her eyes on the prize. Chanel Tilghman is the mysterious Mariah, a loner who seems to possess more moral fiber than the rest. An exchange that distills the difference between the two girls and expresses their opinions of each other is this:
Annabel – “The Ramones aren’t going to help you get into college.”
Mariah – “It’s possible to care about something other than getting into college and still get into college.”
Annabel – “Yeah. A state school.”
Mariah – “Everyone knows you’re a vampire who would sleep with Hitler to get a good grade. But a snob, too?”
Playwright Maury Zeff’s script is complex, literate, and packed with insight. Beyond that, it can be viewed as an allegory of today’s political environment. I rue evaluating so many plays through a Trumpian lens, but this play has currency as a world premiere. And just given what has already been revealed about Tyler, it is easy to see the commonality with Trump of caring only for one’s self and absolutely nothing else. Seeing the full play fleshes out his character more. It also reveals the enabling that allows Tyler to exert outsized control over the people around him, another connection with Donald Trump.
Although the play can be identified as a dramedy, with an abundance of funny situations of various sorts, the underlying message is chilling. Director Gary Graves keeps the action moving briskly, and it engages throughout.
Notwithstanding my enthusiasm for the new play development that is Central Works’ stock in trade, my hesitancy about this one was that the “teen musical” in the title didn’t appeal. I love rock and roll but can do without rap and head knocking hard rock that might be on the agenda. As it turns out, there are just a few innocuous Ramones clips. The only original song “Join the Throng” closes the play, bringing closure to the characters’ current goals and to the Dada version of The Sound of Music. The music of the song appeals; the lyrics are sensational; and it is quite funny. It left me wanting more.
Dada Teen Musical: The Play, a world premiere, is written by Maury Zeff, produced by Central Works, and plays at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA through November 16, 2025.