Thicker than Water 2008

SCHOOL DAZE Sebastian, left, gets a romantic education.

Photograph: Jen Maufrans Kelly

If the budding playwrights of Youngblood write what they know, they are one heartbroken bunch of scribes. In the seven works that make up the mostly entertaining revue Thicker than Water 2008, there are enough soured relationships, dysfunctional families and sexual mishaps to fuel several full-length shows. Luckily, these sharp doses of grief and woe come in limited bursts and are leavened by abundant humor.

The curtain opener and the best of the bunch, Co-Op is a cute minimusical set in a crunchy-granola community food shop in rural Oregon. Using a folk-pop score and shamelessly silly lyrics (there’s much rhyming with the state’s name: “door again,” “unsure again”), book writer Brooke Lauria and composer-lyricist Matt Schatz craft a portrait of sad-sack Bean (Julie Fitzpatrick), who aches to leave her dull town, and Ethan (Steve Boyer), a shy local who actually kinda likes it there. Grizzled store manager Ted (Thomas Lyons) provides witty romantic advice in the ditty “Don’t Date Your Double.”

Amy Herzog contributes an acid sketch of two ex-lovers still prone to jealousy in 508; a mother’s ghost reenters her son and husband’s lives in the form of lost mail in Michael Sendrow’s For Candy; and Justin Deabler’s semipolitical drama Red Blue and Purple addresses the emotional gulf between former hometown pals—he’s living the artist’s life in the city, and she’s become an obese, heavily medicated megachurch attendee. The 45-minute Both is a meandering but deadpan-sweet look at the erotic vagaries of college life, seen through the hookups and flirtations of Josephine (the sad-eyed Maureen Sebastian). Young Josephine finds no lasting love, but she easily earns your affection.

—David Cote