Storm Large is Crazy Enough
13/8/09 11:23![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsStorm Large's "Crazy Enough" is the funny, raw, raunchy musical one-woman tour de force autobiographical stage production that's been playing to sold-out houses at Portland Center Stage since April. I finally got to see it yesterday.
She's six feet tall, Storm is. And Storm Large is her real, given name. The story begins with her being told offhandedly by a doctor when she's nine years old that her mother's mental illness is hereditary and that she will go crazy in her early 20s.
She does. Her mother spends much of her life in hospitals, following various suicide attempts and other episodes, and little Stormy, doomed to the same fate, raises herself. Sexually active--she claims by choice--at the age of twelve, by 22 she's on heroin. She's 40 now. Somewhere between there and here, she...completely failed to find sanity. She's functionally crazy. As the title says, she's Crazy Enough to live in her larger-than-life life.
Storm alternates present-day (apparently casual and often hilarious) chatting with the audience with enactments of past scenes, flickering in and out of extreme emotional states (heroin withdrawal, abortion, visions of demons, her mother's death), and sometimes only the perfectly-timed launching into songs reminds you that you're watching a play.
People in the packed audience, including most of the theater staff, had seen the show three, four, seven, eight times, and everyone agreed that yesterday Storm gave the best performance so far in her amazing four-month run. It could have been the presence of cameras; I don't know. It was an extra performance that was being filmed for undisclosed purposes, and that's how I got a seat.
The first act ends with the iconic song of the whole play, which is an impossibly catchy earworm called "Eight Miles Wide", and which is so wonderful that I'm embedding the music-vid version right here: You do NOT want this song stuck in your head at work, because singing the chorus out loud will get you some looks.
I'm hoping that the presence of filmmakers at yesterday's performance means that this amazing play will be available in some form, someday, to the rest of the world outside of Portland. I wish everyone could see it.
She's six feet tall, Storm is. And Storm Large is her real, given name. The story begins with her being told offhandedly by a doctor when she's nine years old that her mother's mental illness is hereditary and that she will go crazy in her early 20s.
She does. Her mother spends much of her life in hospitals, following various suicide attempts and other episodes, and little Stormy, doomed to the same fate, raises herself. Sexually active--she claims by choice--at the age of twelve, by 22 she's on heroin. She's 40 now. Somewhere between there and here, she...completely failed to find sanity. She's functionally crazy. As the title says, she's Crazy Enough to live in her larger-than-life life.
Storm alternates present-day (apparently casual and often hilarious) chatting with the audience with enactments of past scenes, flickering in and out of extreme emotional states (heroin withdrawal, abortion, visions of demons, her mother's death), and sometimes only the perfectly-timed launching into songs reminds you that you're watching a play.
People in the packed audience, including most of the theater staff, had seen the show three, four, seven, eight times, and everyone agreed that yesterday Storm gave the best performance so far in her amazing four-month run. It could have been the presence of cameras; I don't know. It was an extra performance that was being filmed for undisclosed purposes, and that's how I got a seat.
The first act ends with the iconic song of the whole play, which is an impossibly catchy earworm called "Eight Miles Wide", and which is so wonderful that I'm embedding the music-vid version right here: You do NOT want this song stuck in your head at work, because singing the chorus out loud will get you some looks.
I'm hoping that the presence of filmmakers at yesterday's performance means that this amazing play will be available in some form, someday, to the rest of the world outside of Portland. I wish everyone could see it.
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(no subject)
13/8/09 20:26 (UTC)(no subject)
13/8/09 22:02 (UTC)(no subject)
14/8/09 09:08 (UTC)(no subject)
14/8/09 17:16 (UTC)(no subject)
14/8/09 09:05 (UTC)(no subject)
14/8/09 17:18 (UTC)(no subject)
16/8/09 02:14 (UTC)(no subject)
16/8/09 02:18 (UTC)It was a hell of a show.