I & You (Belvoir 25a) ★★★½

Written by Lauren Gunderson. Belvoir 25a. 6-18 May, 2025.

It’s the most YA of YA plots—so much so you could probably rename Lauren Gunderson’s 2014 teen romance I and You something like The Fault in Our Star Turtles (you’ll get it when you see the show). Despite occasionally feeling more like someone’s film pitch than a piece of theatre, I and You achieves its goals admirably. It’s adorable and sad. Sadorable, if you will.

Caroline (Alyssa Peters) is home sick—and has been for most of her life. She’s waiting for a kidney transplant, spending her time in her bedroom immersed in the back catalogue of Elvis and dancing around with her favourite toy, a blue turtle. She’s surprised when athletic schoolmate Anthony (Josh Hammond) turns up trying to rope her into a school project analysing a poem by Walt Whitman. And so “grumpy, sick girl” meets “handsome jock,” and the duo are forced to spend hours alone together to hit their assignment deadline.

Surprise: she’s not that mean after all, and he has the soul of a poet and a taste for jazz. They meet-cute hard, talking about life, death, their dreams and secret passions. But there’s a twist… which I’m obviously not going to spoil.

This is schmaltz with a side of saccharine, and it’s not trying to pretend otherwise. Two attractive young people in a room for a play—you won’t be surprised at where it goes, only that it takes as long as it does to get there. I and You doesn’t have a message or a grand moral to deliver. Instead, it wraps you up in a pulpy romance plot that won’t make your brain do much more than go “awww.”

The dialogue is quippy teen banter—never too dense—and delivered by two actors with oodles of charm. Like the overly loquacious teens we’ve come to expect from every teen-focused TV show post-Dawson’s Creek, the conversation isn’t remotely realistic, but it has a cadence all its own that works in this artificial environment.

Of course, the kicker is that the one bit I most want to talk about is tied up in the play’s “twist”—which we can’t really discuss—but it will make you look back at the previous hour searching for hints. My complaint is that there aren’t many, which makes the late tonal shift feel more like a cheap trick than a meaningful reveal. I saw another play a few years ago that used the exact same twist (oddly, that one was a horror—I’m not telling you what it was), and it was layered into the story with much more art and subtlety.

I and You continues the 25a trend of looking and sounding like it cost far more than the $2,500 budget would suggest. The set and lighting by Saint Clair & Mason Browne have a whimsical charm (I did wonder if the splatter effect on the ground was actually left over from Snakeface, to be honest). Claudia Barrie’s direction is focused and keeps things moving, though the play does occasionally feel like it’s spinning its wheels, waiting for the next conversational turn. The closing moments, including an expressionistic dance sequence, didn’t quite achieve the strong emotional climax they were aiming for.

Despite its lack of grander themes, I and You delivers a simple, brisk (only 75 minutes long) teen story. More importantly, it serves as a showcase for two very good performers—whose agents should be dragging every casting director to come and see them. Fans of YA media will enjoy it. Is this essential viewing? No. Is it a sweet reprieve from the world outside? Definitely.