Tuesday, December 1, 1998
‘Girl’ strains to see fame’s failings
THEATER: Exploration of illusionary dream stalls in mediocre
production
By Sandy Yang
Daily Bruin Staff
Crowded clothing stores line Melrose Avenue, displaying the
multitudes of low-cut party dresses and assorted accouterments. The
Zephyr Theater rests snug between the stores in the street, as
small as its surroundings. But unlike the store displays promoting
window shopping, you have to venture into the theater’s hallway to
get the gist of what’s being offered – a sort of metaphor for the
play inside, "Girl of the Year."
At first glance, there is only a gaudy flashiness emanating from
the setting and the characters in "Girl of the Year," but the next
two hours set up an exploration beneath the glitz. Taking place in
1968, the play is set in a bedroom of a building in a run-down
neighborhood. On the walls are black and white glossies of stars
such as Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. Clothes and bottles are
strewn on the floor and the inhabitant of the apartment, Noelle
(Michelle Mitchell), parades around the room, dressed mostly in a
bra and panties with horribly bright blue eye shadow.
In the first act, Noelle seems to be high on drugs with her
yelling and sudden, over-the-top mood shifts, which would explain
the overacting. Her erratic nature is highlighted even more when
her abusive, junkie boyfriend, Travis (Marc Robinson), comes home
and shoots down Noelle’s aspirations to fame.
Travis also chastises Noelle’s naivete in the beginning when she
brings home someone she met on the subway named Dogboy, who spends
most of the play locked in a bathroom, making pitiful animal
noises. It is later, however, that Noelle’s naivete robs her of all
her self-worth and sanity in a world that would love nothing but to
take advantage of her desperation and vulnerability.
The first act gives a hint of this conclusion, as a smarmy
character named Dominick (Frayne Rosanoff) finds Noelle and claims
he is famed director Isadore Weber’s right-hand man and who met the
aspiring starlet in a celebration of the "The Fifty Most Famous
People" the night before. He promises to give Noelle the chance she
has been pining for all her life.
In between each scene, there are solo performances by Sarah May,
who plays the elusive Girl of the Year and who Noelle fantasizes
about being. Vicki, the Girl of the Year, dressed in cute little
dresses and feather boas is just as unstable, if not more than
Noelle. She talks schizophrenically about her homosexual brother,
her own preference for homosexual men, her covers on Vogue, her
desperate need for drugs, and her electro-shock treatment. Between
her uncomfortable, erratic speeches, she laughs with a strained
deliberateness that she doesn’t seem to be able to control.
Whereas the first act seemed to drag at a lot of moments with a
clunky flow and self-serving acting, the second act picks up speed
towards the end. To our surprise, Dominick really is legit, and he
brings Isadore (Greg Travis) down to Noelle’s apartment to film a
suicide scene featuring Noelle and Travis. The cameras are rolling
as Noelle breaks down and submits to any degrading wishes that the
filmmakers fancy.
The most moving scene happens between Noelle and Travis, who has
questions about her worth in front of the very people who are
threatening to take it away. Travis also reveals his own surprising
past and his true feelings for Noelle, which is news to us.
Throughout the whole play, there is no foreshadowing of Travis’s
final revelations, which makes them unbelievable, however
entertaining and sympathetic.
These inconsistencies aren’t very distracting, though. Just a
scene with Travis is a treat. Robinson brings a liveliness and an
entertaining, cynical presence every time he’s on. He keeps the
story moving when it seems like all the characters are so caught up
in themselves that the story stagnates in a self-therapy
session.
But the play’s message doesn’t suffer; instead, the soliloquies
reinforce the hefty price of fame, a thin veneer as one-dimensional
as the magazine covers on which the pretty faces are pasted.
Beneath all that, however, these people are messed up – not the
happy-go-lucky cover girls they are advertised to be.
Noelle, only looking at the surface, expects so much only to be
manipulated and let down hard. In a last-ditch attempt, she is
craving to retrieve the ideal in the most masochistic way … like
Vicki, who knows masochism all too well.
Though the characters in "Girl of the Year" are hard to
sympathize with (Noelle is too annoying with a scratchy, excitable
voice and Travis is abusive and denigrating), they do succeed in
being sympathetic in the end.
The solo tirades from both Vicki and Noelle are revealing, but
in a slow pace that tests your patience at times in figuring out
what’s going on with them mentally and why they let everyone else
determine their worth.
Still, it is a fascinating look into the dark side of fame, or
media-induced attention starvation, that unmercifully drains
self-worth from a person.
THEATER: "Girl of the Year" plays at the Zephyr Theater, 7456
Melrose Ave., through Dec. 20. General admission is $20. For ticket
information, call (310) 289-2999.Sara May stars in "Girl of the
Year," playing at the Zephyr Theater through Dec. 20.
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