Review - Usual Girls

For one reason or another having to do with my job, various scripts end up on my desk, or writers' names are tossed about the office, so I try to keep up on who or what is being talked about.  Plus, I'm always looking out for young writers, especially young women of color, so getting a ticket to the Roundabout Underground production of Usual Girls by Ming Peiffer was rather a no-brainer for me.  The tickets are all inexpensive, so by hesitating just a little too long, I got locked out of the original run, but fortunately I was online when the extension was announced and I pounced on tickets.  I saw the show last night with a lovely pal - Usual Girls closes soon and I wish I had left myself enough time to go back and see it again, because...WOW!  It's a stunner.  Reader beware, because there might be spoilers coming...

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Usual Girls is probably one of the boldest plays I've seen.  It is bold, unsettling, funny, scary, and very very true.  Peiffer is telling the story of a young woman of color growing up in a small midwestern town - we see Kyeoung throughout her school years, from elementary school through college and beyond.  In the opening scene, four third-graders are playing Lava Monster and jumping along some stones.  They are exuberant, goofy and terrifically funny girls, and they all try to one up each other with crazy stories - once Kyeoung starts talking about the 'special' magazines her dad looks at, we're forced to remember how curious kids are and how easily they become sexualized.  Adult actors play the eight-year-olds and they're playing them in an exaggerated way, yet they're still touchingly recognizable and real.  And really funny.  The play starts off pretty uproariously, as these little girls talk about things they really know nothing about, though we're suddenly struck by the little boy who comes on stage and says he'll tell on them unless one of them kisses him.  Because "that's what girls are supposed to do."

From that line to the closing line of "It never f*cking stops," we're engaged in a story that you don't often see:  what it's like to be a woman, especially a woman of color, and how they're often punished for having sexuality.  And it's told without a love story, or a love interest - there are men, of course, but it's mainly a story by a woman, about women, told by women.  It was rather astonishing.  Our whole lives, men try to persuade us to give them parts of ourselves, sexually, and then they criticize us or punish us for doing it.  And women fall into weird patterns of competition between themselves - it's all very convoluted and strange and probably wouldn't be so bad if we didn't treat women's sexuality and bodies as something to hide and whisper about.  So in the scenes from high school, college, and beyond, we see women bonding and turning on each other, sometimes simultaneously, and it was really just so eloquent and true.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Usual Girls has delicious, fresh and funny dialogue which then turns into raw and stinging dialogue (though there is a hysterically funny monologue towards the end that sort of satirizes a woman becoming 'woke').  The play is quirky, funny and weird at the beginning, but begins to narrow into serious sadness, understanding and acceptance/grief of what racism and shame do to young women. The girls we see so freely sharing their joy and laughter aren't the same at the end of the play.  We see what years of having to be 'nice' does and how it can affect everything you do from now on. 

The acting was amazing, top to bottom.  Along with the actors playing all of the girls through to adulthood, there were two male actors, and there was also a character called The Woman, who may have represented Kyeoung's adult self.  I thought everyone was wonderful - so unique and human and funny and sad.  Really really terrific stuff.  The connection they all had to each other had a powerful resonance for me.

I feel like I'm all over the place, trying to describe Usual Girls.  I just loved how off-kilter I felt after experiencing this play - I've certainly not seen anything like it and I don't often feel as rattled as I did afterwards.  Even riding in the elevator back up to the lobby at the end of the night was a strange experience; I felt strange being in such a confined space with a couple of very large gentlemen.  I don't think they had particularly enjoyed themselves at the play and their unhappiness was shaking me up a bit in the elevator.  It's pretty amazing, if you ask me, when a young writer finds such truth that can reach across race and age and make you think about things you should be thinking about already, but you're not.

The show closes next weekend and is advertised as sold out, but they do keep a wait list at the theater; last night, five or six wait list people got in.  You should really try to see Usual Girls because it's not usual at all.  And Ming Pfeiffer is a name I think we're going to be hearing for a very long time.