Star Witnesses
Flashpoint Theatre Company completes its impressive third season with Gina Gionfriddo's sharp U.S. Drag.
"You can get a lot of money," overeducated underachiever Allison realizes in Gina Gionfriddo's sharp comedy U.S. Drag, "if you're in the right place when something bad happens." Some quick real-life parallels: Monica Lewinsky, the "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks, and every other victim, self-victim and bystander ever offered a book deal.
Flashpoint Theatre Company completes its impressive third season with this area premiere, which, like Gionfriddo's acerbic After Ashley, skewers modern society with deadly accuracy.
Katy O'Leary and Kate Bailey deliciously embody Allison and Angela, unemployed English majors ("You can't expect us to go out every night and be fascinating after working all day," they protest) looking for an easy payday. A $100,000 reward offered for an attacker named Ed leads them to do-gooders James (who stalks victims with creepy offers of assistance) and Evan (who forms citizen action group Stay Away From Ed — SAFE — which preaches "don't help," since Ed traps victims by playing possum). Add neurotic James Frey-ish author Chris (who's surprised that his "creative nonfiction" memoir Breaking the Boy alienates the parents he labels monsters), and Allison and Angela seem almost reasonable.
Director Erin Lucas' well-acted production celebrates these characters' extremes without sacrificing their humanity. While articulately vacuous and too aware of their gorgeousness to be anything but repellent, these women reveal tantalizing glimmers of conscience. O'Leary's Allison gloms to Andrew Gorell's earnest James, replacing her dream of fame with a vision of domestic bliss defined by antiquing and Oprah's book list. Bailey's Angela navigates life sneering, but we share her envious dismay at the bizarre success of Nick Wilder's Chris, who tosses her several weeks' salary (at her minimum-wage bookstore gig) for a cuddle.
Adam Riggar's an expert at innovative, multilocation sets, as evidenced by his appropriately cold, metal duct-framed design. Sound designer Michael Osinski captures the desperate party scene Allison and Angela hope to conquer with harsh club music.
Nathaniel Robertson's simmering Ned and Melissa Connell's mousy Mary, both victims of Ed's attacks, cope in fascinatingly different, albeit unresolved, ways. Jess Conda creates several different characters vividly, participating in the play's suitably disturbing ending.
A sociopath, Evan observes, "lacks the capacity to empathize," and we snicker when we realize that he's describing all the characters. Flashpoint succeeds brilliantly by encouraging us to empathize with, rather than merely judge, the effects of real-life absurdity in U.S. Drag.
U.S. Drag
Through May 25Flashpoint Theatre Company Second Stage at the Adrienne2030 Sansom St., 215-563-4330, www.flashpointtheatre.org
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