FRINGE REVIEW: The Edge of Our Bodies

It's a keen portrait of an anguished teen, with a dash of meta-theater tossed in, and if you're drawn into Bernadette's drama, you may find the meticulous nuance of playwright Adam Rapp's script quite poignant.

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FRINGE REVIEW: The Edge of Our Bodies

POSTED: Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 2:15 PM

Every year, there's hundreds and hundreds of performances at the Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival, and unless it's one of the big shows, it's sometimes hard to tell what you're going to get. Here at Critical Mass we're sending writers to as many shows as we possibly can for 75 pocket-sized reviews over the course of the fest. Check back in with us at On The Fringe every day for real talk on what these things actually are!

SHOW: The Edge of Our Bodies

GROUP: Theatre Exile

GENRE: Theater

ATTENDED: Tue., Sept. 11, 7 p.m.

CLOSES: Sun., Sept. 23

BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter) captures with startling intimacy the vulnerability and insight of a teenage girl at the threshold of adult experience. Somewhere “just beyond the edge of what we know. Where the skin contains us.” A Philadelphia premiere directed by Matt Pfeiffer, starring Nicole Erb.

WE THINK: The Edge of Our Bodies presents a tale — perhaps a tall one — told in the first person, by Bernadette (Nicole Erb), a 16 year-old girl who leaves her boarding school to give some unexpected news to her boyfriend in New York. Initially reading from a journal, she shares the windmills of her mind about a series of encounters, which reveal her to be precocious, vulnerable and confused; she wants to be noticed and invisible at the same time. Or maybe not. Bernadette is an aspiring writer and she might be making the whole thing up.

It’s a keen portrait of an anguished teen, with a dash of meta-theater tossed in, and if you’re drawn into Bernadette’s drama, you may find the meticulous nuance of playwright Adam Rapp’s script quite poignant. Or, you could lapse into ennui and think this is all just a bunch of whining from a poor little rich girl. I found it a bit of both. Erb’s delivery is intentionally dry, with occasional flickers of energy, the script seems dark for the sake of dark, and that gets tiring.

—Deni Kasrel

Posted by Deni Kasrel @ 2:15 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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