While “Straight White Men” are alienated in today’s higher education, one university playwright is offering a new work devoted to them.

Ryan Fleming offers a review of this new endeavor in The Brown Spectator:

Young Jean Lee’s latest work in progress, Straight White Men, opened last weekend to a packed Leeds Theatre at Brown. Although the title suggests that the script would focus on such concepts as patriarchy or cis privilege, the play takes an introspective look at what success is in contemporary American society.

The play’s cast consists of only four characters, an aging father and his three middle-aged sons…

…The conflict of the story begins when Matt begins to break down in tears for no ostensible reason. It soon becomes clear though that Matt is struggling to find a meaning for his life, and he fears his search for some type of successful life is in vain.

Fleming manages to extract some meaning from the work, and praises both the production and the actors.

The goal of liberalism is entirely terrestrial, the betterment of mankind being the ultimate end to its goal. But what if that goal is achieved? What if there was racial harmony, social equality, a complete blurring of class lines? What would people have to live for? It seems that Straight White Men is asking that very question, by using straight white men as a group that has seemingly accomplished this feat. They have fought and won their battle for freedom of speech, religion, sovereignty, and more. So without the need to fight for anything anymore, what do straight white men have to live for, or more generally, what does the end goal, the telos, of liberalism offer? More directly, can mankind live solely for mankind?

Perhaps intentionally, or maybe through divine serendipity, the ostensible meaningless of the family’s lives is juxtaposed with their rejection of a higher being or any sort of higher calling. The sons make their obligatory Christmas toast to “the Lord”, to which the father responds with, “to Mabel [the name of the Christmas tree].”

Segel, Thurston, Peterson, and Chiboucas deserve a considerable amount of praise for their performances, and Lee demonstrates considerable skill in connecting the audience to the characters. She also manages to create a genuine brotherly bond between the characters, deftly moving between serious matter and brotherly shenanigans. The performance was thoroughly enjoyable, and the humor was so well done that audience at times sounded like the laugh track from the Big Bang Theory. More impressive was the fact that Lee manages to avoid being didactic and instead does what all good artists should do: expand the audience’s mind, leaving them contemplating deeper truth.