First Day of School

In Billy Aronson's raucous comedy First Day of School — making its West Coast premiere at SF Playhouse — well-to-do parents attend to their six-year-old children's prospects with a ferocity arising from barely repressed sexual frustration. We've seen this before, but Aronson adds an ingenious twist: His soccer moms and dads end up planning an annual swingers' party that feels less like a gangbang than a slightly off-kilter PTA function. Unfortunately, as with too many farces, the setup is more involving than the chaos that follows; the carefully modulated tone of the first act can't be sustained throughout the sexual shenanigans of the second and third. Still, the playwright offers a few dazzling speeches for his characters along the way, and all of the actors in director Chris Smith's sharp production relish the intense cleverness of the play's smartest passages. It's too bad that Aronson felt the need to include a blandly comforting ending — at its best, First Day of School is pretty devilish stuff, and it deserves a conclusion with more ironic punch. None of this is to say that you shouldn't see it. An ambitious new comedy is always worth checking out, even if its rewards don't quite negate its shortcomings.