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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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