Thank-Yous, Reviews & Exciting News!

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who came out for 1-900-SELFPLEX at FringeNYC 2009. Our company is so proud of the show and thankful for everyone we had the opportunity to share it with!

And now, the reviews!

From Time Out New York online:

**** [FOUR STARS] If you call 1-900-SELFPLEX on a phone, it won’t connect. You’ll have better luck at Alex DeFazio’s intriguing play. Alberta (Deena Jiles) is an ambitious renaissance woman with myriad professional hats – writer, artist, temporary phone-sex operator – whose imagination calls into being a young, transgender male named Jeremy (Patrick Martin), and passes his story off as real. Her girlfriend, Max (Jennifer Joyce), is cautious about how Alberta reaches her goals and who helps her along the way – especially when it comes to Max’s strung-out younger sister, Abby (Michelle Wood), who pretends to be Jeremy for the benefit of reporters eager to put a face to the writing. Throughout the play, the characters struggle with love, confidence, dreams, self-worth and, most importantly, their identities. Although some aspects of 1-900-SELFPLEX are confusing at first, DeFazio’s absorbing script eventually made me eager to see what would happen to all of her fictional characters – especially, oddly enough, the most fictional of them all: Jeremy.

From хотелско обзавежданеnytheatre.com:

[STARRED REVIEW] It can be difficult when one’s imagination becomes more real than reality. This is the problem facing Alberta Lesalle and the focus of 1-900-SELFPLEX, an interesting new play written by Alex DeFazio running at the Cherry Lane Studio Theater.

 

Alberta (Deena Jiles) lives with her girlfriend, Max (Jennifer Joyce), and the two women struggle to be noticed as artists in a world where Max does grunt work for a record company and Alberta works as a phone sex operator. But, while dispensing with her dirty talk, Alberta gets an idea: people don’t care about what’s real and what’s fake, so long as they are given a good story. So, Alberta taps into the character of J.C., a transgendered teenage boy – who she “sees” in her imagination and we see onstage played by Patrick Martin. J.C.’s story becomes a hit, netting Alberta’s pseudonym a book deal and forcing her to come up with even more imaginary characters, such as J.C.’s doctor and his social worker, to keep the reclusive young celebrity from ever being seen by the public. Alberta even goes so far as to hire Max’s estranged sister, Abby (Michelle Wood), to play J.C. in public until, predictably, Alberta’s real and imagined lives become too much to maintain.

 

I say “predictably” not to disparage the events of this play, but to point out their inevitability. But inevitability can be very fun to watch – and that is the case with 1-900-SELFPLEX. Jiles plays Alberta with a self-assurance that increases the weight that her eventual comeuppance will crush down on her. And DeFazio has crafted a well-written play that gives us a different angle on the “fake memoir” debate. This one shows how real the fake character can become and how, in this case, J.C. is the tragic victim of Alberta’s ambition. Jody P. Person’s direction also does a nice job of keeping J.C. very present in Alberta’s world, while keeping him invisible to all the other characters.

If you weren’t able to make it to FringeNYC for 1-900-SELFPLEX, never fear: In a first for our company, Elixir Productions will broadcast 1-900-SELFPLEX directly to you over the internet!

Check back soon for the webcast – and prepare to enter the selfplex via the world wide web!

August 29, 2009 | Filed Under Media Sightings, News 

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