Theater review
“Some Girl(s)”
Grade: C+
Through Oct. 21. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays; 8 p.m. Monday. $18-$25. Selah Center Theatre (at Druid Hills Baptist Church), 1085 Ponce de Leon Ave., Atlanta. 800-838-3006. pnotheatre.org.
Bottom line: One "Girl" shines in particular.
You’ve got to hand it to Grant McGowen, the enterprising co-founder and artistic director of Pinch ’n’ Ouch Theatre. In just two short years, with more than half a dozen productions to its credit already, his upstart company has shown a knack for tackling gutsy contemporary plays by the likes of David Mamet (“Speed-the-Plow”), Kenneth Lonergan (“Lobby Hero”) and Neil LaBute (“Reasons to be Pretty”) with mostly respectable results.
As an actor, though, McGowen’s performance in director Susan Reid’s current Pinch ’n’ Ouch staging of LaBute’s “Some Girl(s)” is less impressive. He portrays the aptly named Guy, in equal parts an ardent womanizer and arrogant writer, and an otherwise wholly selfish jerk. On the brink of finally tying the marital knot, Guy crisscrosses the country rekindling contact with a handful of his former flames.
Each of the women has her own cause to be wary of him, but McGowen’s overly casual approach to the character only makes it harder to fathom what they saw or see in Guy at all. Not especially charismatic or passionate in any romantic sense, nor sufficiently cocky or sly in terms of suggesting ulterior motives, the blandness of McGowen’s Guy effectively drains the show of much spark.
Designer Christopher Dills’ set is a generic hotel room. Between the play’s four scenes, a stagehand (costumed as a housekeeper) swaps out a few decorative pillows, and suddenly Guy has moved from Seattle to Chicago or from Boston to Los Angeles. (It might’ve been clever, as well, had Dills and Reid devised a way to also change a prominent piece of artwork on the wall.)
Just as the disreputable Guy claims to be “making amends” and “righting the wrongs” of his past, as if rebutting those detractors who accuse LaBute’s plays of being misogynistic (see “Fat Pig”), in “Some Girl(s)” the playwright has created four juicy characters for women.
Reid casts them fairly well: Kelly Criss is Sam, Guy’s seemingly timid high school sweetheart; Julissa Sabino is Tyler, his smokin’ girlfriend from college; and Jackie Costello is Bobbi, a more sophisticated and recent lover. All three acquit themselves nicely enough.
But the production only truly comes to life during Lala Cochran’s scene. The seasoned actress takes great relish in her role as Lindsay, the scorned older (and married) woman who most aggressively retaliates by calling Guy out as the “emotional terrorist” that he is and then giving him a taste of his own medicine. While Guy may have met his match, it’s all McGowen can do not to simply fade away opposite the fiery Cochran.
Despite his commendable efforts behind the scenes — based on previous shows he has directed for Pinch 'n' Ouch, his challenging choices of material for the troupe and the fact that he recently secured a cozy new space in which to work (from the basement of a Virginia-Highland church) — it remains to be seen how commanding a presence McGowen might be on stage, too.
