Friday night’s performance of Carter W. Lewis’ world premiere play “Kid Peculiar at the Coral Court Motel,” directed by PAD artist-in-residence Andrea Urice, was packed to the gills, a sold out showing at the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. The wait for the show to begin seemed interminably long, perhaps because it was 20 or 30 degrees hotter in the theatre than the rest of Mallinckrodt. But once the house lights went down and the show began, nobody was paying any attention to the heat-for about an hour and twenty minutes, eyes and ears were riveted to the stage.

The play progressed quickly from the outset with little exposition, throwing the audience right into the situation-Stamp (senior Brian Golden) and his estranged mother Madeline (senior Tracey Kaplan) at their yearly meeting at the infamous (to St. Louisans anyway) Coral Court Motel, where Stamp was conceived.

The comedic banter back and forth between Stamp and Madeline betrays that, although this is not a typical mother-son relationship, there are still ways to tell that they are mother and son-chiding, joking, and occasional instances of motherly affection from Madeline. Kaplan handled her role well, as did Golden, making the audience forget right away that this mother and son were being played by people the same age.

Like many contemporary plays, but better than most, “Kid Peculiar” jumps back and forth between wry comedy and intense drama. The reason much of the humor works here is because some of the plot points and tensions between the characters-which would give too much away to the reader to reveal here-are incredibly uncomfortable, both for the characters and the audience. The humor works as a relief both for the audience and the characters, and that’s why it works-well, it also works because some of the barbs shot back and forth between the dysfunctional family couple are very clever and funny.

The set design reflects the actual Coral Court well-and this is from someone who’s actually stayed there (no, no stories of adultery or murder, I was a little kid). The only problem with the staging was that some of the time the characters were too far downstage and it was hard for people sitting in the back to see what was going on. Lighting and music choices highlighted the emotional aspects of the play and the backdrop of the Coral Court as well.

Commissioned for the sesquicentennial celebration, references to Washington University abound in the play. That was the only aspect of it that felt forced in any way, though it is doubtful the references would seem odd if the play was performed anywhere else. Playwright Lewis handled the rest of the St. Louis references well, getting most of them out of the way in Stamp’s opening speech full of “Ted Drewes, Blues and Cards.”

By the end of the show, though the theatre was as hot as hell, the emotional heat from the performers was far hotter. This is a world premiere to see before it’s gone just like the Coral Court Motel, only a memory.

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