Rich characters deepen drama about boyhood

The simplest and most genuine stories can be the hardest to translate into theater.

The Columbus Children’s Theatre production of “Crash,” based on a novel by Jerry Spinelli and sensitively adapted by Y York, connects directly with the deepest emotions of this story about a middleschool student at a turning point.

William Goldsmith, directing with restraint and careful attention, keeps the feelings of the characters sincere without indulging in unnecessary theatrics.

It’s too rare to have at the center of a play an ordinary pre-adolescent boy with a volatile combination of undisciplined rage, bravado and sheer excess energy.

John “Crash” Coogan, a marvel of intermittently suppressed and wildly ambivalent feelings in the capable hands of Tanner Sells, wants to come across as a cool football player, but his heart and mind aren’t letting him.

Although he makes friends with a callous new peer, Mike (James Zalimas), he can’t easily ignore an embarrassing old friend Penn he hasn’t outgrown as well as he thought (a charmingly cheerful and chatty Tyton Ballew); his insistent younger sister, Abby (Rayli Boyd); or the workaholic dad he longs to please (Steven McGann). And he finds his confidence undermined by a new girl in school, Jane (Carleigh Benson), who inexplicably prefers Penn’s company to his.

When Crash’s largerthan-life grandfather (Scott Willis) suffers a health crisis for which Crash blames himself, he begins to re-evaluate his choices — in a realistic, not overly dramatic, way.

This is Crash’s story, but the other characters are allowed their own struggles, their own anger and frustration and fear.

In one way, the play is about bullying, absentee parents, sports culture and the difficulty of defining oneself amidst one’s peers.

What makes it special, though, is how those themes never seem didactic but instead rise naturally out of well-developed characters.