Why Not Join the Giraffes?

From Hope Campbell's delightful novel about teenagers in New York City, which was published with great success by W. W. Norton & Co., James Reach has created a bright, bubbly and strictlv up-to-the-minute comedy that is especially recommended as a highnschool class play. The story concerns flfteen-vear old Suzie Henderson and her crowd: Natalie Goldman, her best friend; Ralph Chesney, the boy who has just moved to Suzie's Riverside Drive neighborhood from Illinois and whom she would dearly love to impress; and the bane of Suzie's existence, her brother Sam, a hairy hippie and the leader of a rock-and-roll group called "The Giraffes," which Suzie considers deplorably lacking in cultural significance. Suzie's father is a television writer, and her mother is a very abstract painter. They are charming people who believe in giving their children the freedom to work out their own lives, to be themselves. But Suzie wishes they would be more conventional, like other parents. It's impossible to detail the ridiculous and riotous complications as the play races from Riverside Drive to a coffeehouse down in Greenwich Village. Yet the production is not at all difficult; it calls for one standing set and two easy insets. To sum up, this is a play you and your audiences will love. It's cool, man. Dig?