Ashling is every busy parent's dream: a professional nanny with experience and a warm, sunny attitude. But from the moment Mary hires her to look after her young children, things start to feel a little…off. Are Mary's stressful work schedule and lack of sleep playing games with her own sanity, or has she welcomed an unstable troublemaker into her home? At once harrowing and hilarious, Erica Schmidt's LUCY explores the wild range of parents' emotions, asking if we can entrust others with the safety of our home.
Like a grizzly bear with a fish, Collins (who could pass for 32, is actually 45, and plays even older here) slams each of her lines against the proverbial stone and eats their every last piece, gutsily swinging between passive-aggressive remarks and aggressive-aggressive directives, her performance growing aptly wilder as the story flies off the rails. Once it is settled that it is not a great play, nor an effective production of what could be a fun exercise in camp, Collins rises to fill the ludicrous gaps left by the direction, though Bloom’s hysterical, climactic, “How do you think I felt, coming home and seeing that SOUP?” is as lip sync ready as they come. Let’s revisit this in 10 years when RuPaul buys the Minetta Lane from Audible and stages drag-only performances
The perfectly cast pair Schmidt has found in Brooke Bloom (Mary) and Lynn Collins (Ashling), plus an adorable and diverting Charlotte Surak as Lucy, are nonetheless worth the price of admission. Sure, you can wait to hear them when Audible releases Lucy as an audio drama. But then you won't see that 'Anti-Hero' dance party, that one blissfully beautiful moment, awash in vibrant pink lights, before everything rapidly devolves. For the characters and the audience, it is exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.
2023 | Off-Broadway |
Audible Theater Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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