Six diverse women cope with hard times in the big city, on its streets, in its bistros and byways, in this fast-paced, hard-driving one-woman show Alanna Ubach created, performs and co-wrote with her director, Ian McCrudden. Ubach is one peppy young lady of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, who prefers to be considered omni-ethnic, and can pull it off, as we see here. Bio notes say she started acting at age l0, and judging by her extensive list of credits, she hasn't stopped for a moment since.
The recurring character here is a street-smart Puerto Rican toughie on the mean streets of New York, hustling tie-died T-shirts blazoned with blotchy American flag emblems--or anything else she can sell from the geegaws and doodads stashed in the lining of her padded jacket. She's trying to raise money for her indigent pregnant sister. She can't read or write. She's a game little dynamo, of the earth, earthy, who demands respect and may remind you a bit of Lily Tomlin's more ethereal bag lady in Search for Signs of Intelligent Life.... Next she's a dauntless black performer with exaggerated curves, auditioning for a gig. She pulls tap shoes from a See's Candy bag and struts her stuff. Everything jiggles.
Now she's such a nonstop high-energy workout addict at an exercise spa, one needs to be in good condition just to watch. She leaves us, but not herself, breathless. As a rich bitchiest-bitch-of-them-all, she throws her weight around at a chic Manhattan watering hole. Her most affecting, and emotional, portrayal is that of an Iranian woman suffering intense grief and guilt after an abortion, seeking solace at a cathedral. This episode ties significantly into the evening's final vignette, in which the street gamine's sister blissfully awaits the birth of her baby--which she decrees must be a girl, who must grow up to be "a strong woman." It amounts to a mission statement, and it ends the show on a note of hope and courage.
Ubach is very young, very talented, and very beautiful, with an agile, disciplined dancer's body, startlingly wide green/blue/ hazel eyes, and an expressive face that can be waif, bitch, siren, or madonna. That she's altogether gorgeous seems to be the last thing on her mind, which I find refreshing.
One complaint: On opening night the program handed out was miserably inadequate. They promise a better one.