Someone Else Who Answers to Lally

Lally is my new friend. Most of my family calls me Lally. (How's that for Jill trivia?) Lally is the only other person I've ever met who answers to "Lally." This is only one of the ways that this may be the strangest connection I've made with a perfect stranger since Kim didn't even blink when I announced a burning desire to chop up one of the other members of our Drama Since WWII class. If you knew my life, you'd know that for this to be the "strangest connection...", well...it's going to have to be really, really strange. The condition of someone being a complete stranger does nothing to stop me from saying exactly what I'm thinking. Except in really, really, really strange cases. But that's a story for another time. For me to self-censor, you know it's gotta be a winner. And now I fear I have over-used the word strange, and perhaps been too lazy to find a better candidate.

Lally comes to FringeCENTRAL, and I am helping her take care of administrative ticket-buying stuff for the performances of her play, The Eisteddfod. We discuss real estate. We feel we should own some. Other people, younger than we are, are making us look bad. Playwriting isn't immediately the most lucrative of professions.

Yesterday, I go see the show's first performance. I'm in the lobby, rifling through my bag, looking for my staff access badge. "I love your necklaces," she says, "or is it one?"

"It's one," I tell her. "I actually wrote about it in one of my essays."

"Can I read it?" she asks.

I watch the play. I love the play. It's absurd and dark and wickedly funny and true while still retaining the air of the imaginary. "Your writing style," I tell her, "it's spare, and the characters have this intriguing darkness to them."

"Come out for dinner with us," she invites, and later answers my thought, "We think we we're attracted to people for their light, but it's their dark side that keeps us intrigued." We giggle wickedly and I tell her that that's exactly what I'm writing about right now. "I have to read it," she says.

Lally is a waitress. "Hospitality and theater," she believes, "are really so much the same. You're putting on a show whether you're accomodating guests or on stage." I marvel that that's almost word for word what I wrote in one of my essays. She's up for reading that as well. Oddly enough, it's the same essay that prominently features the necklace she loves so much. This is getting freakier by the second. It's not like she's reading my mind; it's like all the stuff in my head is in hers as well. What the heck else is in there? What the hell else is in this essay, she wants to know.

Eventually, I have to leave to meet Kim and go to the egg-breaking show. Lally and I exchange all sorts of contact information and plan to do lunch or dinner or whatever before she goes home. "You really ought to come to Melbourne," she tells me, "You would love it." It's always been on my to-do list, I tell her. We part ways on 9th Street. "This is so funny," she says, "I feel like I have a new friend."


Ok, so besides the fact that I've just befriended the playwright, you all should go see The Eisteddfod. First of all, you know that I can't be friends with someone if I don't really respect their work. But also, the direction is superb, the visual design is striking and spare, the lighting is used creatively to perfect effect, the soundscape is unnervingly haunting, and the acting is phenomenal. The cast of two, Jessamy and Luke--it's impossible to take your eyes off them. She evokes such a wounded vulnerability with this character, it was surreal to be discussing silliness and shoe-shopping with her only an hour later. And he is an absolute chameleon, shifting with seeming effortlessness from puppy-dog passiveness to abject humiliation to raw masculine command. The theater company is Stuck Pigs Squealing. They have six more shows during the festival, then are remaining in NYC for an August 31-September 10 run at Ontological-Hysteric Theatre.