FLORIDA THEATER ON STAGE REVIEW:
Last Call Is Worth Dropping In For Before Closing Time
By Bill Hirschman
In Last Call, it’s the patrons who sit and listen to the bartender talk about her life. Turns out the bartender is more fascinating and better company than her customers ever could be.
The world premiere of Terri Girvin’s funny and even touching tour through the interior life of someone people take for granted is a modest gem worthy of dropping in at faux tavern inside the tiny Empire Stage.
The catch line may not sound promising – an autobiographical one-woman comedy about a former actress and stand-up comic who is now a bartender, talking to us before and during a harried shift in a neighborhood watering hole in New York City. But Girvin is a naturally engaging storyteller and her cannily efficient preparations for the coming shift are interspersed with quirky tales of growing up with an idiosyncratic mother who now wants to move her train wreck of a life from California to Girvin’s backyard.
Last Call instantly grabs the audience as Girvin enters the bar to set up for the night. Girvin, a diminutive woman with a faint blue collar air, wins us over with a self-deprecating, world-weary wit, a sharp eye for human foibles and a willingness to expose the secrets of a good bartender such as placing the napkins on the bar in a way that cuts down the number of steps she’ll take on the 11 miles she’ll walk tonight.
But even more telling is when she reveals she’s really thinking. She always answers perfunctory inquiries of “How ya’ doin’?” with a slightly sardonic “Livin’ the dream.” In fact, the dream has some nightmarish facets such as her needy mother’s pleas to save her life. Much funnier are her silent retorts to such silly requests as an order for an ultra-sweet concoction: “There’s a world of adult liquor here that does not scream, ‘Burp me.’ ”
The transplanted New Yorker has been developing the piece for quite some time with local director Michael Leeds and sound designers Phil Palazzolo and David Hart. The end result is an amazingly smooth and fluid piece of theater. It bounces back and forth in time and place as Girvin recalls scenes from her childhood and previous crises dealing with her parents, all interspersed with a dizzyingly busy night coping with regular customers, drunks, lechers, an old boyfriend and other denizens.
“Sometimes I feel like Julie the cruise director on the Douche Bag Boat,” she tosses off with a wry smile.
The long gestation has enabled Girvin and company to evolve an breathtakingly intricate interplay of monologue, action and sound bites so that we hear her conversing with a large cast of characters, hear her slicing invisible limes, hear her slamming the cash register drawer closed, watch her stride up, around and even atop the bar, all adding up to an intricate physical and aural dance as carefully choreographed as a ballet and more fraught with the potential for fatal gaffes than a circus aerialist act.
But what gives the 80-minute show dramatic heft is the running battle over the phone with her out-of-control mother who is inherently funny (she was a party clown for years) but also an alcoholic and a black hole for affection. The anguish she causes Girvin will strike a chord with any adult wrestling with the looming responsibility of being a parent to their parent.
“Every phone call feels like she’s taking a piece of my soul,” Girvin says.
As her mother’s pleas increase, Girvin and Leeds ratchet up the pace at the bar until it seem s impossible that any single human being could keep up with the simultaneous demanding demands of the mob around the bar.
As astounding as Girvin and her team may be in marrying the precision soundscape and her highly-polished performance, it’s not a trick on display for its own sake. It’s technology in direct service of Girvin’s artistic vision.
Last Call is one of those nice surprises for serial theatergoers who will find themselves suddenly charmed by an entertaining and intriguing piece of work.
Last Call runs through May 6 from First Step Productions and Empire Stage at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Performances 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25. Cash only at the door. Call (954) 383-1896, or visit www.smarttix.com for credit card sales.
Last Call Is Worth Dropping In For Before Closing Time
By Bill Hirschman
In Last Call, it’s the patrons who sit and listen to the bartender talk about her life. Turns out the bartender is more fascinating and better company than her customers ever could be.
The world premiere of Terri Girvin’s funny and even touching tour through the interior life of someone people take for granted is a modest gem worthy of dropping in at faux tavern inside the tiny Empire Stage.
The catch line may not sound promising – an autobiographical one-woman comedy about a former actress and stand-up comic who is now a bartender, talking to us before and during a harried shift in a neighborhood watering hole in New York City. But Girvin is a naturally engaging storyteller and her cannily efficient preparations for the coming shift are interspersed with quirky tales of growing up with an idiosyncratic mother who now wants to move her train wreck of a life from California to Girvin’s backyard.
Last Call instantly grabs the audience as Girvin enters the bar to set up for the night. Girvin, a diminutive woman with a faint blue collar air, wins us over with a self-deprecating, world-weary wit, a sharp eye for human foibles and a willingness to expose the secrets of a good bartender such as placing the napkins on the bar in a way that cuts down the number of steps she’ll take on the 11 miles she’ll walk tonight.
But even more telling is when she reveals she’s really thinking. She always answers perfunctory inquiries of “How ya’ doin’?” with a slightly sardonic “Livin’ the dream.” In fact, the dream has some nightmarish facets such as her needy mother’s pleas to save her life. Much funnier are her silent retorts to such silly requests as an order for an ultra-sweet concoction: “There’s a world of adult liquor here that does not scream, ‘Burp me.’ ”
The transplanted New Yorker has been developing the piece for quite some time with local director Michael Leeds and sound designers Phil Palazzolo and David Hart. The end result is an amazingly smooth and fluid piece of theater. It bounces back and forth in time and place as Girvin recalls scenes from her childhood and previous crises dealing with her parents, all interspersed with a dizzyingly busy night coping with regular customers, drunks, lechers, an old boyfriend and other denizens.
“Sometimes I feel like Julie the cruise director on the Douche Bag Boat,” she tosses off with a wry smile.
The long gestation has enabled Girvin and company to evolve an breathtakingly intricate interplay of monologue, action and sound bites so that we hear her conversing with a large cast of characters, hear her slicing invisible limes, hear her slamming the cash register drawer closed, watch her stride up, around and even atop the bar, all adding up to an intricate physical and aural dance as carefully choreographed as a ballet and more fraught with the potential for fatal gaffes than a circus aerialist act.
But what gives the 80-minute show dramatic heft is the running battle over the phone with her out-of-control mother who is inherently funny (she was a party clown for years) but also an alcoholic and a black hole for affection. The anguish she causes Girvin will strike a chord with any adult wrestling with the looming responsibility of being a parent to their parent.
“Every phone call feels like she’s taking a piece of my soul,” Girvin says.
As her mother’s pleas increase, Girvin and Leeds ratchet up the pace at the bar until it seem s impossible that any single human being could keep up with the simultaneous demanding demands of the mob around the bar.
As astounding as Girvin and her team may be in marrying the precision soundscape and her highly-polished performance, it’s not a trick on display for its own sake. It’s technology in direct service of Girvin’s artistic vision.
Last Call is one of those nice surprises for serial theatergoers who will find themselves suddenly charmed by an entertaining and intriguing piece of work.
Last Call runs through May 6 from First Step Productions and Empire Stage at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Performances 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25. Cash only at the door. Call (954) 383-1896, or visit www.smarttix.com for credit card sales.
SUN SENTINEL REVIEW:
Terri Girvin's 'Last Call' is one hell of a cocktail
By Rod Stafford Hagwood, Sun Sentinel 8:07 a.m. EDT, April 19, 2012
The thing about a one-woman show, in this case the world premiere of "Last Call" at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale, is that it almost always comes off as indulgent.Thankfully, that is not the case with this 80-minute, no-intermission whirlwind of a show written by and starring Terri Girvin. "Last Call" doesn't pause long enough to be immoderate as Girvin whips through one shift as a bartender in Manhattan.
That alone would be interesting enough, but this intricately choreographed piece dives headfirst into deeper waters as Girvin's character wrestles with her oh-so-needy mom, a woman we only know from her phone calls and is apparently in her last desperate hours before becoming homeless.
Again, a one-person show so dependent on a dizzying amount of sound cues – cash registers, slicing limes, happy-hour chatter, phone calls, liquor pours, clinking glasses – easily could have slipped into Disasterville, population one. But director Michael Leeds and sound designers Phil Pallozzalo and David Hart support their star beautifully, allowing her to give a bravura performance.
It's a personal one. In addition to giving us the ins and out of the personalities visiting the neighborhood watering hole, Girvin's show is autobiographical. She time-hops (thanks to some spare, but deftly executed, lighting by Christopher Michaels). One second, she's flashing back to her childhood. The next, she's in her first career as an actress and standup comedienne. And then, just as suddenly, she's in the past, clashing with her party clown of a mom, who – no joke – works as a party clown.
You would think the mechanics of the show would overwhelm Girvin, a diminutive spark plug of a woman. But Girvin has timing, which appears to have been honed in comedy clubs, and the snappy patter of someone who spent years working as a New York bartender. When she brings it all to a poignant close, well, that's the actress in her.
Last Call
When: Through May 6; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Dr., Fort Lauderdale
Cost: $25 (cash only at the door). To pay with credit card, call 212-868-444 or visit SmartTix.com
Contact: 954-383-1896 or 954-678-1496, LastCallShow.weebly.com or EmpireStage.com
Terri Girvin's 'Last Call' is one hell of a cocktail
By Rod Stafford Hagwood, Sun Sentinel 8:07 a.m. EDT, April 19, 2012
The thing about a one-woman show, in this case the world premiere of "Last Call" at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale, is that it almost always comes off as indulgent.Thankfully, that is not the case with this 80-minute, no-intermission whirlwind of a show written by and starring Terri Girvin. "Last Call" doesn't pause long enough to be immoderate as Girvin whips through one shift as a bartender in Manhattan.
That alone would be interesting enough, but this intricately choreographed piece dives headfirst into deeper waters as Girvin's character wrestles with her oh-so-needy mom, a woman we only know from her phone calls and is apparently in her last desperate hours before becoming homeless.
Again, a one-person show so dependent on a dizzying amount of sound cues – cash registers, slicing limes, happy-hour chatter, phone calls, liquor pours, clinking glasses – easily could have slipped into Disasterville, population one. But director Michael Leeds and sound designers Phil Pallozzalo and David Hart support their star beautifully, allowing her to give a bravura performance.
It's a personal one. In addition to giving us the ins and out of the personalities visiting the neighborhood watering hole, Girvin's show is autobiographical. She time-hops (thanks to some spare, but deftly executed, lighting by Christopher Michaels). One second, she's flashing back to her childhood. The next, she's in her first career as an actress and standup comedienne. And then, just as suddenly, she's in the past, clashing with her party clown of a mom, who – no joke – works as a party clown.
You would think the mechanics of the show would overwhelm Girvin, a diminutive spark plug of a woman. But Girvin has timing, which appears to have been honed in comedy clubs, and the snappy patter of someone who spent years working as a New York bartender. When she brings it all to a poignant close, well, that's the actress in her.
Last Call
When: Through May 6; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Dr., Fort Lauderdale
Cost: $25 (cash only at the door). To pay with credit card, call 212-868-444 or visit SmartTix.com
Contact: 954-383-1896 or 954-678-1496, LastCallShow.weebly.com or EmpireStage.com