She Like Girls

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She Like Girls

Working Man's Clothes Productions at the Ohio Theatre

Reviewed by Nicole Villeneuve

December 04, 2009

Photo by Julie Rossman

"She Like Girls" is an attack on all your senses: Ears are assaulted with Jay-Z rap lyrics, graffiti covers every visible surface, and the tension is palpable at the start. Welcome to playwright Chisa Hutchinson's inner city, where issues of race take a back seat to those of sexual orientation.

Hutchinson creates a world alienating and familiar, sexual and violent, with high energy and tension. This is best exhibited in the opening scene, a dream sequence in which three cheerleaders perform an aggressive routine that devolves into a teasing sex show, like a ghetto homage to "American Beauty." Adding to this energy are carefully crafted characters, notably Andre (Paul Notice II), who vacillates between his sympathetic side and his gangster front, and Marisol (Karen Sours), the Hispanic bombshell who is surprisingly complex for a sex symbol. When Sours turns on the salsa music and shimmies around the stage, it's easy to be seduced.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Kia (Karen Eilbacher), who initially comes across as the personification of a mumble: She wears clothes that beg not to be seen and kicks at the ground without looking up when speaking. She is one voice among many, and hers is lost among the overwhelming crowd that Hutchinson presents in aural montage, from a trio of professors lecturing about sexuality to a jumble of derogatory remarks from classmates. But Kia's voice and personality emerge as she discovers her lesbianism, prompting another look—if not a particularly novel one—at how the language of sexuality is deployed in our culture.

"She Like Girls" falters primarily in its pacing. Hutchinson knows how to start scenes but can't seem to figure out how to end them. The pattern of short scenes interrupts the pounding rhythm of the playwright's world, and while the well-designed set requires no alterations, the sound of actors fumbling in the dark toward their next cue is unmistakable. At each dramatic climax lights fade to black, leaving the characters in perpetual limbo and evading the attempts at resolution that shape them.

Presented by Working Man's Clothes Productions at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster St., NYC. Dec. 3–29. Wed.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. (Additional performances Mon., Dec. 28, and Tue., Dec. 29, 8 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, or www.theatermania.com.