"Mesmerizing."
-The Village Voice
Adapted
and directed by Bridgette Dunlap
Based on the short story by Kelly Link
from the book Stranger Things Happen
Connelly Theater, New York
February-March 2007
Featuring
Kathryn Ekblad, Tim Eliot, Alexis Grausz, Chris Hale, Charley Layton,
John Long, Madeleine Maby, Sara Montgomery, Elizabeth Neptune, Danielle
Thorpe, Marie Weller and Ben Wood
Choreography
by Whitney Stock, set and costume design by Emily French, lighting
design by Michael Salvas, sound design by Chris Rummel
The
Crown Point Festival
Abrons Art Center, Harry Du Jur Playhouse
November 2007
Starring Stephen Agosto, Kathryn Ekblad, Glory Gallo, Alexis Grausz,
Charley Layton, Madeleine Maby, Sara Montgomery, Javier Muños,
Elizabeth Neptune, Anthony Palenscar, Hugh Scully, Danielle Thorpe,
Marie Weller and Ben Wood
Original
choreography by Whitney Stock, additional choreography by Alexis
Grausz and Anthony Palenscar, set design by Emily French, costume
design by Emily French and Amy VanMullekom, lighting design by James
Bedell, sound design by Chris Rummel
Photography
by Anthony Collins and Christopher Montgomery
The
Village Voice
Clue Love
A fairy-tale sleuth seeks out missing memories
by Katie Baker
March 6th, 2007
At the beginning of The Girl Detective, an adaptation of Kelly Link's
postmodern fairy tale, our titular sleuth (captivatingly played
by Kathryn Ekblad) is presented with her latest case: a bank robbery
committed by 12 beauties in boas and black masks who tap-dance their
way into tellers' hearts and vaults. In their wake, the underworld
spills out into safes and missing things begin to reappear—
retainers, mismatched socks, even Amelia Earhart.
Turns
out, the Girl Detective knows all about the underworld—she
goes there every night in other people's dreams to search for her
missing mother. And as this mesmerizing play progresses, it comes
to resemble a dream. Odd characters waltz through—Chinese
waiters, 12 dancing sisters. In the under world, words and images
are slippery, memory is unstable, and things that mean the most
to us (like the color of our lover's eyes) threaten to disappear
faster than the Girl Detective can change disguises. Beneath its
fizzy fun, the play asks a question that haunts our nightmares:
What if life is a series of increasingly serious losses—first,
a cat runs away, then our husband vamooses with the secretary, then
we forget our mother's face—until the underworld claims all
and we are left with nothing?
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