Hey Little Walter and Other Prize-winning Plays from the 1989 and 1990 Young Playwrights Festivals Author: Edited by Wendy Lamb - Introduction by Nancy Quinn Publisher: Dell Publishing Pages: 236

Ever finish reading a book and find yourself with the hollow sensation that you may have missed something incredibly important? After the final page of Hey Little Walter and Other Prize-winning Plays from the 1989 and 1990 Young Playwrights Festivals, I wondered if everything else I've either written or read was a bit too lucid.

The plays in this collection were written by young people from the ages of 15 to 18. They deal with such emotions and issues as alienation and the inner-city drug crisis.

Oddly enough, Stephanie Brown's A Night with Doris pushes both of these elements to the hilt. Here, a group of teen-agers gather at an awkward party given by Doris, who obsessively charts her views of the universe, including the relationships between Ronald Reagan, cheetahs and broccoli. Later, an alien entity bearing a striking resemblance to Mr. Rogers appears. This play does indeed push the limits.

The pivotal truth of A Night with Doris, though, is a conversation between Doris and Mark, an old friend, in which all Doris wants is to be told, for once, that she is beautiful.

Carla Debbie Alleyne's Hey Little Walter is the most powerful play in the compilation, using the gold chains worn by drug dealers as a metaphor for the chains worn around the wrists and ankles of blacks over the years. Hey Little Walter is the ominous tale of one black family's struggle for something better as they learn where the drug culture will take them. It takes one son to the grave, but that doesn't stop his younger brother from walking into his blood-stained tracks.

Slightly more pleasing to fans of traditional story structure is Twice Shy by Debra Terri Neff. Neff has touched on a minefield of issues faced by vulnerable, attractive Louise Coco as she relates to those who care about her.

Cookie, her stylish mother, thinks a "nice young man" would solve Louise's problems, so she fixes Louise up with the vapid, yet attractive Steven. Desmond, Louise's roommate's lover, suggests that she take up t'ai chi, a Chineese system of self-defense and meditation.

Neff's just-left-of- center characters are likable and believable, like the mellow Desmond, who practices t'ai chi, and Steven, who forever attempts to be sensitive.

Hey Little Walter and Other Prize-Winning Plays from the 1989 and 1990 Young Playwrights Festivals, as a collection, is in parts moving, frustrating, endearing and introspective. It brings about for readers a cacophony of the pleasant and the infuriating, while touching on countless issues relevant to young people. For those with open minds and who appreciate the abstract, it's a good choice to see what's on the mind of today's young writers.