Nobody Cares But You
Arielle Gray @ Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
6:00pm, Sat 6 Mar 2010
Arielle Gray plays three separate monologues, all written and directed by Luke Milton. The first piece, The Rise and Return of Verity Westlake, has Gray playing an actress who, in lieu of talent, hopped on the celebrity gossip bandwagon… then dies in a car accident. She’s genuinely upset to see the public lose interest in her après-life, and tries to rebuild her career… and there’s a touching moment when she discovers that her manager – the chap she treated like shit – is the only one who still truly loves her.
Lenni Lenape and the Secret Mystery of the Mysterious Secret Agent sees the ten-year-old girl scout Lenni hunting down her father, who she believes is a spy. He is, of course, nothing more than a seed-spreading low-life, and her mother doesn’t even realise that Lenni has gone missing – on her birthday.
The final piece, The Invisible Bloodbath, features a serial killer who remains unrecognised by the media; in a nice little twist, she feels that she is the victim. Eventually she hunts and captures a guy who is genuinely afraid of her… so she keeps him alive, in an oddball bit of co-dependence.
Remember when multi-character monologues were all the rage? They seem to have died off a bit in popularity the last couple of years, but there’s certainly another one – at the same venue, no less – that is easy to contrast with this performance. And whilst Di Smith’s acting in Peeled may be a bit more practised compared to Arielle Gray’s work here, Nobody Cares But You wins out – Gray performs competently, but the most important thing is that her characters all have a lot more heart. All three pieces are pretty humorous, with the antics surrounding the naïve Lenni Lenape bordering on the creepy, but they all address the desire of being appreciated in a thoughtful manner. Recommended.