A looming prom night for a set of Year 11 high school students puts a ticking clock under this study of contemporary anxiety and diversity from playwright Jacob Parker and Sydney’s Legit Theatre Company.

Just about all of the piece takes place in a schoolyard (a design by Benedict Janeczko-Taylor) in the weeks and days leading up to the big night. This is where friends, frenemies and lovers meet to talk over stuff that has fascinated teenagers from the year dot: who’s doing what, to whom, and how?

Here though, Parker busts open the old binaries to show how today’s young are dealing (or sometimes not) with evolving possibilities, language, identities and demands.

Dumb Kids. Photo © Phil Erbacher

Taking Frank Wedekind’s classic Spring Awakening as its inspirational springboard, Dumb Kids is an ensemble piece in which just about everyone one stage has something to wrestle with – from the number of balloons needed for prom night to the very essence of selfhood.

We observe, for example, as Maria (Rachel Seeto) wrestles with lesbian identity after being ‘outed’ by Gabe (Fraser Crane) the school’s most out student, who is, in turn, in a...