Outside Wednesday Night At Toad’s

Warning: This production contains strong evocations of suicide. People sensitive to this subject should consider the Sunday 11/5 reading rather than the fully staged play. 

A witty, smiling and seemingly put-together freshman hangs himself in the sanctuary of his Bingham suite, protected by a bolted door and his routinely beaming nonchalance, and no one knows what broke when. At Yale, where kids allow nothing to ever go wrong, things rarely do. So as the vigils light up for Adiche and articles leak out from crevices of the campus wide and unheard, his friends are left only to wonder if something went awry in the way they loved and were loved by the dead boy. Outside Toad’s is an exploration of the intricate social dynamics that develop in the melting pot of ideologies, nationalities and colors allowed to run amok at Yale College. The play wanders through the incomplete stories of these brilliant, irreplaceable teenagers at the cusp of adulthood, stroked by the glowing pride of their peers and the excellence of the institution. Through a mishmash of conversations heard and scattered through the lenses of paranoia and intellect, the story unravels the mishaps of the perfect life lived collegiate at Yale. The play delves into the importance that race dynamics play in the individual’s head space, how complicated the ideas of assimilation and inclusion become and just how easily they overpower one’s mental health struggles. The story of Adiche’s life, a suicide in two acts, makes commentary on our generational moods – of irony, of cynicism and of the romanticization of depression and the penance for it that came in the form of anxiety.