THEATER REVIEW: The Terrible Girls @ Azuka Theatre, 3/23

Fear and desperation corrupt the women in Jacqueline Goldfinger's Southern Gothic-meets-dark comedy one-act.

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THEATER REVIEW: The Terrible Girls @ Azuka Theatre, 3/23

POSTED: Friday, March 25, 2011, 11:00 AM

FEMMES FATALE: The Terrible Girls, on stage through April 3 at Azuka Theatre. (Alex Heishman)

Fear and desperation corrupt the women in Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Southern Gothic-meets-dark comedy one-act, the terrible girls.

Three waitresses are tightly cuffed — first by their misfortunes, and then to each other. In the kitchen of a Florida diner off the I-10, proudly upright Birdie (Zura Johnson) bickers with the oversexed Gretch (Kristyn Chouniere) while both look after slow-as-molasses Minnie (Amanda Schoonover). Gretch tries to get Birdie a man and some fun before she dies, while Birdie tries to keep the devil away. It’s hard to see what makes these girls so terrible … until the first murder.

All are abandoned in some way and run the diner in loyalty to their absent benefactor, Mr. Witherose. 3 Women comes to mind, and the terrible girls shares a certain amorphous realism. There is no telling how long Mr. Witherose, the diner’s owner, has been gone, and his reasons for leaving are a mystery. Birdie and Gretch both wait for their prince to return and sweep one of them away, while Minnie simply wants to stock the bar and keep her makeshift family together.

No cavernous plantation house exists to hide the women’s piling misdeeds, and the questions that arise stay with you long after the actors take their bow. Sharp comic timing brings a vital levity to the cutting plot twists and nightmarish revelations. It’s an interesting examination of need for authority, whether real or imagined, that keeps us in the most precarious situations. Emotional needs beat logic to the truth in this pressure-cooker drama.

Through April 3, $10-$20, Azuka Theater, 531 N. 7th St., 215-733-0255, azukatheatre.org.

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