A Captive Audience
Winners At Life @ The Tuxedo Cat – Rooftop
4:00pm, Sun 7 Mar 2010
I love Sarah Quinn. I’ve been saying that for years, and I’m afraid that she’s fearful that my adoration has entered the creepy-zone. Which it hasn’t.
I hope.
A Captive Audience, as with 2009’s Other People’s Problems, is a series of short one-woman plays – this year, all five are penned by DeAnne Smith. The format was also similar to previous efforts, with the stage largely barren but for a few items – labelled with sticky notes – and Quinn’s wardrobe changes, which she wriggles in and out of between vignettes.
A couples therapy piece (from the point of view of a frustrated woman) opens the performance strongly, but the lowlight of the Problems follows it in Valedictory, which unfortunately felt a little too clichéd. The compulsive helpline caller, though, was fabulous, and more than made up for the earlier lull.
The final piece, More Love, Less Damage, sees Quinn as God, speaking only via flash cards. And the one-sided conversation that the cards conveyed made the audience uncomfortable, tossing the odd contentious – and thought-provoking – phrase (or accusation) into the mix. And with her mouth firmly shut (like she was dissolving a delicious lolly and was offering no chance for escape), most of God’s communication came from Her eyes… and I have no problems with that at all, because Her eyes are dreamy.
…wait – was that too high on the creepy-scale?
In all, A Captive Audience still satisfies, though it’s perhaps a little patchier than previous efforts; but she’s still wonderfully talented, absolutely gorgeous, and funny as fuck. And Quinn as God was quite an incredible performance – that piece, alone, was worth the price of admission.