Playwright Lila Rose Kaplan's heavy hand is ever-present in Wildflower, now at the McGinn/Cazale as part of Second Stage Theatre's Uptown Series. Nothing in this play about summertime love and teens coming-of-age happens because of human nature or psychology; instead, characters act in ways that are expedient for moving the piece's contrived plot forward.

The work centers on Erica (Nadia Bowers), who is recently separated from her husband and has moved with her introverted, and seemingly ADD, teenage son Randolph (played with a combination of agitation and ugly sullenness by Jake O'Connor) to a small town in Colorado, where an annual wildflower festival is big business. She arrives only wi[...]