INTENTS LOVE

Victoria Lynne Barclay’s impressive
debut traces a friendship—and a missed
connection—across twenty-five years

The world premiere of Camping by Victoria Lynne Barclay offers a genuine surprise: this is her professional debut as a playwright. You’d never guess it after witnessing this two-hander unfold across eight scenes spanning twenty-five years of friendship. The play makes you look back at your own life and reevaluate choices made. Or not! On top of which, watching Ari (Colby Minifie) and Brit (Alice Kremelberg) age from fifteen to forty—with barely a moment off-stage—is a performance tour de force that is admirable, raw, and highly recommended.

The entire play is confined inside a camping tent, and the audience is right there with them thanks to Krit Robinson‘s superb scenic design. A black proscenium arch traces the silhouette of the tent itself, granting us an intimate interior view—nothing beyond the tent except a suggestion of nature visible through the zippered main entrance upstage center. Vittoria Orlando‘s lighting is flawless in its naturalism, moving from the glow of an LED lantern and the beam of a flashlight to sunlight and moonlight filtering through the side zippered mesh screens. A generous prop plot by Thomas Jenkeleit and crystal-clear sound design by Salvador Zamora round out a production that is, in every technical respect, handsomely realized. Credit is equally due to Executive Producer Heather Cohn, Production Manager Sophie Larin/LJPM, and Technical Director Piper Nickels.

In the opening scene, Ari and Brit are fifteen years old and waiting for two high school boys to arrive so that they can lose their virginity and be done with it. Scene two takes place just twenty minutes later, after the fact. Relieved it is over yet profoundly uncertain about what has just happened, the conversation that follows is the kind that should be heard by every young man: frank, raw, and specific. A blood stain on the sleeping bag remains the silent centerpiece as the girls parse the experience with clear-eyed teenage candor. “Well, I don’t think it feels like being stabbed repeatedly in the vag, but I’m honestly not sure,” Ari confesses. Brit nods along: “Right. Supposed to feel good, isn’t it?”

The scenes that follow trace life taking its inevitable course: Ari leaving for college, Brit being left behind in small town life, working at a bar, and Ari’s return visits. And that one kiss, that one evening together in the tent. Will it ever be repeated? Acknowledged? Life has a way of absorbing such questions into its own noise: marriage, children, the slow drift of middle age. Watching both women age before our eyes is quietly astonishing—particularly Minifie, who seems to age physically as well—aided by Sarita P. Fellows’ evolving costumes and their subtle additions over time.

The question of whether they will ever recapture that earlier, unfinished moment hovers over every scene. Ari, clearly, has long been in love with Brit—yet does it go both ways? Secrets calcify into denial, and denial into regret. And by the end, is a goodbye ultimately heading their way?

Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt charges every leap forward with energy, deploying lighting and original sound composition (also by Salvador Zamora) to their fullest rather than settling for straightforward naturalism. Her staging inside the confined space never once feels repetitive—no small achievement given the single location and the 85 minutes without an intermission. The forward momentum feels assured from first scene to last, as though the playwright and director know exactly where it’s going and trust us to keep up. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be glad you supported Colt Coeur—a strong, adventurous theater company now in its fifteenth year.

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photos by Maria Baranova

Camping
Colt Coeur
HERE Arts Center, 145 6th Ave
85 minutes, no intermission
ends on July 11, 2026
for tickets ($30-$120), visit Colt Coeur

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Gregory Fletcher is a writer and director. His publishing credits include a craft book on playwriting entitled Shorts and Briefs, as well as a collection entitled A Playwright’s Dozen: 13 short plays. Other publishing includes two YA novels (Other People’s Crazy, and Other People’s Drama), 2 novellas in the series Inclusive Bedtime Stories, 2 short stories in The Night Bazaar series, and five essays. Website, Facebook, Instagram.