This solo musical opens with a intercourse scene. A girl (Andrée Bernard) is pushed up towards a closet by her lover. There may be discuss of taut flesh, unblemished pores and skin and wrought muscle. And we return to this peak of ardour towards the closet, adopted by the bath, repeatedly. However in between is a workaday relationship historical past that takes us from teen romance to a collection of inappropriate companions, web dates and a reliable-but-dull dentist. There are males who sweep the lady off her ft and others who reject her. You may name it a type of sexual quest, in concept.
In apply, it’s exhausting to work out what this weird present is saying. If the intention is to take a dive into the travails of recent love from a feminine perspective, it comes again up with cliches. Additionally written by Bernard, the romantic highs are so trite that they could be rehashed from the pages of a Mills & Boon novel (the erotic collection) and the remainder of the fabric is barely there.
Directed by Michael Strassen, Bernard performs an actor struggling to get elements. Her story is about to 9 songs and the manufacturing appears to aspire to a West Finish musical sound and look. Bernard sings about love, intercourse, romance, need and break-ups whereas twirling, shimmying and flick-kicking. There are lyrics like “When god offers you lemons, you attain for the gin” combined in with romantic angst. They’re set to Refrain Line strikes, which leaves Lucie Pankhurst’s jarring choreography overexposed on an empty stage.
Bernard performs the boys that her unnamed narrator meets with a deepening of the voice and a gruff, half-cockney accent. Her agent, Chumley, seems as a caricature, leg cocked, an invisible cigarette in hand. There are briefly dramatised scenes of her performing work, typically involving skimpy attire and sleazy creatives, however these #MeToo parts should not given sufficient due.
We hop from one romance to a different, the narrator in thrall to males referred to in Carry Bradshaw epithets such because the “Tall American” and “Fabulous Photographer”. “I’m a romanta-holic” she says. She actually is – life outdoors the orbit of males is barely touched on and there’s little interiority past a craving for romantic love.
The titled brackets over ‘is’ suggests a play concerning the trendy complexities of womanhood. There may be one point out of a pronoun in passing, by Chumley, in jest. This character is extra old-school than that: she likes to be referred to as “babe” and orders dessert at a restaurant as a press release of empowerment. It could be an trustworthy presentation of a romantic journey however it appears frustratingly unreflective.
