"JUDY IN DISGUISE (WITH GLASSES)," Chemically Imbalanced Comedy at Frankie J’s Methadome Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
By structuring "Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)," her one-woman show rooted in self-esteem issues, as a self-help seminar for insecure writers, Angela Farruggia subtly takes the focus off herself. And in a work that has been drawn from the writer-performer’s experiences, the transference of a character to those hidden crevices of viewers’ subconscious minds allows for more than a dire rumination of a dramatized individual’s disappointments.
Farruggia portrays Judy McClure, a popular author who has overcome debilitating self-doubts and now encourages others – in a politely cutting manner – to take off their own defense-mechanism-inspired disguises and face the world. Her one-hour show, produced by Chemically Imbalanced Comedy at Frankie J’s Methadome Theatre, never loses sight of the audience. She even follows the performance with a quick-witted Q&A session, which highlights Farruggia’s honest improvisational skills – including a sharp remark about turning her obsession with JFK conspiracy theories into a Pop-Up book.
Director Mark Gagné accentuates Farruggia’s greatest strength: sincerity. He has helped Farruggia shape a sympathetic but non-self-pitying character like Judy – regardless of Judy’s setbacks – who celebrates emotional resilience. As Judy, Farruggia also addresses female body image, peer pressure, parental abandonment, death and everyone’s search for purpose in life. In the process, she questions what is normal or right and how far one must go to fit into whatever that elusive, homogenized society might be.
We follow Judy from her troubled adolescence to an equally rocky adulthood – framed by her sanity-preserving friendship with an imaginary figure called Mary Ann. She jumps – too frenetically in fact -- from the various ages of her character by donning goofy hats and over-sized glasses. The frequent blackouts advance the action via the additional mood-defining character of a Dan Elfman sound compilation.
Pacing, however, proves to be Farruggia’s greatest challenge at this time, and not all of the scenes crackle with originality (particularly some of the earlier ones, like when her mother reads her daugher’sjournal, or a later waitressing segment in which she pulls an audience member on stage to dance with her). She can further develop the self-help theme and more consistently incorporate Jo-Elle Munchak as teary-eyed seminar coordinator Trish Anderson into her bits. Farruggia does excel at mingling with the audience in a non-intimidating way.
Her most insightful scenes quietly unveil the tragedy embedded in the comedy – raising questions about the myth of drugs and alcohol making one an extraordinary artist; a brilliant open-mic poetry scene at a coffee shop called "Thanks a Latte," where she parodies "The Vagina Monologues"; a ballistic office experience involving excessive caffeine and a stapler gun; her mother’s belief in paying attention to "making a memory"; and a sparse eulogy at her mother’s funeral in which Judy reiterates an oft-ignored virtue: "Say something good to a person while they’re alive; don’t wait until they’re gone."
Farruggia manages to turn a potentially saccharine statement into a graciously unadorned admonition. Most importantly, Judy rails against invisibility in a world that has forced her to try excruciatingly hard to get noticed (usually by people who don’t matter). Judy journeys from self-loathing to self-actualization by softening the volume of her cries for approval. Yet Farruggia’s conceit of a self-aggrandizing seminar ironically echoes her central character’s underlying need to gain attention – illustrating that our greatest instigator or critic is often ourselves.
It leaves the audience pondering just how much they may have in common with Judy after all.•
Chemically Imbalanced Comedy’s staging of "Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)" stars Angela Farruggia and runs Saturdays at 8 p.m. through November 9 at Frankie J’s Methadome Theatre, 4437 N. Broadway. Tickets: $10. Call 773-865-7731 or log onto www.cicomedy.com.
