Over the last couple of decades, Berkeley Rep has become a hotbed for new work, where young playwrights are not only sought out but cultivated, nurtured, and given room to grow. Such was certainly the case with Dan LeFranc and his new play Troublemaker, or The Freakin' Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright. It's a play about a twelve-year-old boy, and several of his twelve-year-old friends, and the often funny intersection between his hyper, imagined world of intel gathering and neighborhood espionage, and the real world he lives in with his loving, single mom and one devoted best friend.

While we can imagine the play playing excellently well for a young audience, it is written for an adult one, and the characters are all portrayed by young-looking actors who are mostly in their twenties. LeFranc creates a language for Bradley (Gabriel King) and his friends to converse in that is half whimsical word-play and half goofy stand-in lingo for expletives and sex organs. While most tweens these days would use actual swears, especially when talking with each other, LeFranc's giddy use of words like "freak" and "a-hole" and "dong" makes for plenty of laughs, with the stand-in words being far funnier, and sometimes dirtier sounding, than the things they're signifying.

Some of LeFranc's made-up terms (like "pexy" for "sexy") serve other purposes, like just to remind us that these are kids whose innocence is still very much intact, no matter how fast the world is progressing. It's "nineteen mighty-four" when the play opens, and that seems to mean sometime in the 1980s or 90s, since video games are as central to these kids' lives as comic books, and the idea of becoming heroes.

The adult plot line, meanwhile, is far simpler, and exists in parallel with Bradley's imagined versions of it. For one thing, Bradley is a problem child, a troublemaker who's runs afoul of his school principal, acts out against a rich kid named Jake Miller (played with great, teen-movie-villain appeal by Robbie Tann), and tries to run away to Canada. Bradley may believe he's always in the right, and mostly just looking out for himself and his mom (played with perfect pitch by Jennifer Regan), but he's actually misinterpreted many clues along the way, as you discover by the time Act III rolls around.

We'll stop there with the spoilers, and suffice it to say that Bradley's "adventures," and his comic-book-influenced version of things, are far more interesting, and funny, than what's really happening. By the play's end we weren't sure if the final outcome, and its reality revelations, were really deep or compelling enough to have warranted the lengthy and creative lead-up to them. It's kind of a case of a finale that doesn't earn its kinetic first acts, rather than the other way around, but it's nevertheless a sweet denouement.

The set by Kris Stone, a deceptively complex set of modular walls with a spinning, doughnut turntable at its center, is impressive to say the least.

And the performances, across the board, are top notch. King gives a stellar performance as young Bradley, and he's the kind of actor you never want to take your eyes off of. Chad Goodridge does a great job as Bradley's foil and best pal Mikey, who ends up disillusioned by his friend's unwavering commitment to his own story. Jeanna Phillips is great as the spunky Lorette Berretta. Thomas Jay Ryan is touching and believable as a school principal and therapist (and also funny as a zombie-pirate homeless man). And local wonder Danny Scheie is hilarious as a German-accented school enforcer, and former troublemaker himself, Sturgis Drang.

Certainly you need to see this play if you're a fan of new theater, and especially if you like to hear people get called A-holes. A lot.

Troublemaker plays through February 3. Get tickets here, or call the box office for a discount if you're under 30.