The first thing to think about when reviewing Fringe is that
theatre is made by people with hopes and dreams, and try to weigh that against
the vitriol that often emerges when you have an less than enjoyable theatre
experience. How I Lost One Pound: The Musical has the very best of intentions
of celebrating the bodies and “rock star” qualities of all women (men, this
show does not really mention you, except a brief acknowledgment that you may be
feeling left out when we’re all asked to look down at our breasts). My heart
goes out to everyone involved; it feels like we should be friends, and they all
seem like lovely people. I desperately don't want to hurt their feelings. But I will probably wind up doing so, because those feelings just don’t excuse an hour of cliché writing,
highly variable performance quality, and three separate composers for five
unmemorable songs, two of which are thinly disguised “don’t sue” parodies. It
reminds one of how amateurish Fringe can be.
This show is a cabaret, instead of the “one woman’s journey”
I was sort of expecting, featuring several performers telling stories about
their weight-loss struggles, or generic people’s weight loss struggles. They
wear large poufy crinoline-type skirts and scales are tied to their wrists with
measuring tape, except for the older woman in the cast who is instead named
Scale (Barbara Weigelt). This makes sense later, because her story is about
breaking her obsession with the scale, but it looks very strange when they all
try to coordinate movements, like it was something the actress was just
incapable of doing. The sight gag is cute and inventive, but wears out its
welcome as the scales clunk and scrape across the stage (here’s hoping Passe
Muraille’s stage doesn’t get scratched up). They remain on wrists for narrative
purpose (the women will later triumphantly shed them) but they cause problems
with already awkward movement – could they be put on wheels, perhaps?
The material, by Lesley Carlberg, is at its best when there
is some specificity to it. In particular, the stories “Diet” (Chiamaka Ugwu)
tells about her mother’s crazy invented diets such as the Bikini Diet and the
Butter Diet draw laughs, entertaining because her mother is a character with a
specific voice, and I don’t just mean in terms of accent. Meagan O’Kelly,
“Restaurant,” debases herself amusingly as she talks about eating out of the
garbage like a Golden Retriever. Lauren Wolkowski does a nice tough-girl act
towards a man she asks not to give back her chocolate, no matter how much abuse
she heaps on him, and Michelle Paré and Kate Abrams deliver their
moderately amusing clichés with style (though I will admit to laughing at the
Fuck-It, rather than Bucket, List).
It is absolutely refreshing to see larger actresses on stage, although I
dream of a day that a larger actress can be on stage without the point of her
character being that she is large. There is, inexplicably, a “word of the day,”
by audience suggestion, that each actor incorporates into her vignette; we are
supposed to cheer at each mention of the word to keep ourselves engaged (a bad
sign; the material should keep us engaged).
The problems with the show, however, are legion. Like shows
such as Menopause: The Musical, it belongs squarely in a community Mississauga
dinner theatre having a Monday night “Girls Night Out” special. When it’s not
developing specific characters and instead resting on stereotype and “dieting
sucks, ladies, am I right?” it falls totally flat. I don’t mean to imply that
there is no value in trying to generally connect to an audience, but if I’ve
learned anything from theatre, you get better connections with specificity,
even specificity that is not exactly like your viewers’ experience, than you do
with general cliché because specificity is more human. That’s where the
connection actually happens, the humanity, not the knowing wink. It doesn’t
help that the musical aspect adds very little to the show; though a couple of
parodies are cute, it’s still very soulless. I don’t want to overly malign
anyone, though I feel for these women; they’re giving it their all in spite of
a tenuous script. But some are really just not natural performers, and there’s
some painful line forgetting and fake line readings and some off-key singing.
Sometimes I just felt terrible and terribly awkward for a performer. I want
them to succeed, but I also don’t want to be put in that position as an
audience member.
I skipped out on the ending of a Fringe Club tent “alley
play,” The Enchanted Crackhouse, to see this show. Coincidentally, its composer
is also one of the composers of this show. Missing the ending and the very
informal conditions prevent me from reviewing that show, but it’s a lot more
inventive in its silliness, it has better acting and singing, fun puppets and design
concepts, and an actual small band with a theremin, unlike the pre-recorded music
these actresses sing to. This is a
valiant effort, but it’s not audience-ready yet, though I have a feeling it
will have a nice life in dinner theatre.
-Ilana
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