Nobody in Chicago does adolescent angst quite like the Side Project. Why authentic hormonal drama is so difficult to hit on the bull’s-eye is anybody’s guess. But from the awkward pain of The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love Suicide to the delicately irrational teen daughter in Strangers Knocking to the calculated but unemotional killers in Smart, the Side Project has never betrayed the crises of the young people it portrays by packaging them as a commodity. Even when the writing is uneven—as it is in Daniel Talbott’s Slipping—the intimate Rogers Park company treats young-adult characters as if they’re no less complicated than those in Ibsen.

Talbott’s episodic, jump-cutting look into the world of a disaffected gay teen whose give-a-fuck attitude attracts even the straightest-seeming boys features three performances so natural they almost induce double takes. The first half hour of Talbott’s coming-of-rage tale is unpredictable and funny. San Francisco punk Eli (a pitch-perfect Santana) was a mess when his only problem was his hunky “hetero” boyfriend who cruelly abused him. When he finds out his mom has been cheating on his dad—who was just killed in a car wreck—then gets transplanted to Iowa, and learns that his school’s Wonder Bread shortstop has unapologetic hots for him, he begins cutting himself again. But after the surprising scenes of initial courtship from the corn-fed ballplayer and flashbacks to his brutal ex (Caffrey and Gonzalez excel in those respective roles), Talbott’s writing starts to lag into a predictable and gloomy “very special episode” territory. Webster’s direction is never less than inviting—his cast plays untoward seduction scenes like they’re classical music—but there’s considerably less for us to care about in the second half. Still, you won’t find three more legitimately screwed-up teens on any Chicago stage at the moment. And like it or not, that’s a good thing.