Local Celebrity

 written and performed by Alice Nelson, directed by TJ Dawe

The Best Special Effect of Them All
Calgary Herald Review: Local Celebrity by Alice Nelson
Directed by TJ Dawe

Will Scheffer, a New York playwright who's the co-creator of the HBO series Big Love, a polygamy drama, once gave me an interesting piece of advice.

"The audience always responds to the truth," he said. "In fact, it's the only thing they find interesting." What does the truth look like? What does it sound like? Is there a sound cue before it makes its way on stage? How about slides? Dry ice billowing out into the crowd?

In Local Celebrity, a one-woman show by Alice Nelson, the truth comes with a chair and a black backdrop--and Alice, telling a story about a young woman in Grande Prairie, Alberta, from a stable, two-parent family who grows up to become an escort who has sex with men for money.

Nelson, who is also a part of the group Clowns Without Borders, weaves quite a tale over the course of her 50 minute show. A lot of it ain't pretty. It's loser guys paying her to have sex with them. What elevates Local Celebrity beyond the sordid is Alice, who, despite the seaminess of her job, still manages to regard it as a job.

"A lot of it is customer service," she explains, as if she were talking about selling shoes, or working at the local Tim Horton's (her previous job), where they make you pay for the bad TIm Horton's uniform and don't give you an hour off for lunch.

Her writing has the unmistakable ring of the truth to it. It's funny one minute, and breaks your heart the next. We walk in to the Theatre Calgary Lobby, which has been pretty impressively transformed into a 100 seat theatre, but fifteen minutes later, we've all hitched a ride to the seamy side of Grande Prairie. Nelson has a way of cutting through the bull and getting right to the gist of it. Her show starts out a little awkward and nervous -- probably sort of the way one of those escort dates does -- and an hour later, everyone is glued to her story.

That's why, in theatre, the truth is the best special effect of them all.

Four stars out of five

Local Celebrity will play the 2008 Edmonton Fringe Festival.

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