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Hollywood Fringe 2019

Crack Whore, Bulimic, Girl Next Door

Roadkill Productions

Genre: Dark Comedy, New Writing, Storytelling

Venue: The Complex - Ruby Theater

Festival:


Low Down

Through creative use of theatrical elements and ensemble, Crack Whore, Bulimic, Girl Next Door tells the true story of one woman’s coming of age while struggling with mental illness and eating disorders.

Review

Storytelling is a powerful healing medicine through which we can move others by sharing from ourselves. In retelling her past theatrically, Marnie Olson transforms a tale of self-loathing, uncertainty, depression and eating disorders into a darkly comedic hour that urges the audience to grapple with their own conceptions of femininity, self-objectification, and sanity.

Using three personae—introduced as the Crack Whore, Bulimic and Girl Next Door— the show conveys a coming-of-age story riddled with misery, but still ripe with effusive, 80s-tune-fueled joy. Elisabeth Blake, Michelle Danyn and Gloria Galvan step in and out of the spotlight, taking turns portraying the protagonist and building the world. They are supported by the remarkably capable Edward Alvarado, who is brilliant in his many, many roles. He draws big laughs as large cartoony figures like a high school cheerleading coach, earns our empathy as the well-meaning but rejected love interest, and horrifies us as a sexual predator. The show demands a lot of its cast, which is generally successful, though likely some simplification in costume design would facilitate a more even flow of the story. Clothing and its relationship to self-image is, of course, enormously important in conveying this story, but these moments of reflection would be all the more potent if we didn’t have so many costume changes in between.

On the whole, the show succeeds at balancing entertainment value with its message, allowing us to laugh at the things that hurt. The creative concept to trade out three different women of three different appearances interchangeably was very effective—I was completely drawn in most when the tradeoffs accelerated, and an entire dialogue occurred with Alvarado seamlessly conversing with each version, one after the other, picking up exactly where the other left off. It really captured how all of us contain a multitude of identities within ourselves, each with different insecurities and motivations that push us to feel and act the way we do. The women are united, yet separate. The Girl-Next-Door is hegemonically beautiful, but uncomfortable with the objectification that comes with her looks, while the Bulimic is curvy and longs for a type of body she wasn’t born to have. The Crack Whore—who it is noted, early on, isn’t actually a crack whore (that’s largely for “shock value” they quip) but a meek depressive type—feels like crawling out of her skin. These are labels that could apply at any point to one woman, and no single one encompasses who she is, and therefore, she is all of them, and they are all each other.

The show would benefit from some fine tuning—as mentioned, streamlining costume changes could declutter the stage and bring more focus to the story. It also would free up the actors to gain a stronger sense of center—Galvan was on point in every moment, from her delightful side characters with Alvarado to her disturbing moments of self-harm—but her costars did not always seem fully comfortable or confident in their performances. And while I enjoyed the moments of dance—which are significant, as dance is established early in the show as a way of escaping, which in turn becomes a source of torment due to the dance team’s weight rules—they often felt rather prolonged or unfocused. It would be interesting to see the style of dance reflect the insecurity that subverts it within the story.

There was also a lack of focus within the script itself, which often seemed to move quite quickly through the chapters of life without fully mining or resolving them. It would be considerably more powerful if the piece focused more closely on fewer elements rather than glossing over them all. Lastly, the overarching device of the show—the three women as one—was somewhat muddy itself. I’m not sure why the phrase “crack whore” was used at all other than the established shock value, and I wish there had been a richer exploration of why. Something like a monologue that really explains how one could feel like a strung-out waste simply through the torments of the mind could have been pretty impactful, if that’s what the idea was. The girl-next-door figure was also slightly problematic, as she was both celebrated for her hotness and then appeared uncomfortable with it, yet this was only addressed in passing, and didn’t really seem to be fully established, which made it feel rather tacked on. The moments the show really succeeded were where we transcended the artifice and simple telling of the story and went into shared pain, that, in seeing all three women suffer, the audience could relate through their individual experiences as well. I’d love to have seen more of these women as real, to spend time with them and learn about them rather than simply being told. There were moments that touched on this, and they were truly powerful.

Crack Whore, Bulimic, Girl Next Door does have room to grow, but that is the point of Fringe: to see what develops when a show is on its feet and how we can make it stronger. Critiques aside, I found it to be a powerful and entertaining show that has the potential to touch and educate many, using humor to offer a window into an experience that is too often shrouded in shame and secrecy.

Published