For teenage girls, it's all about the numbers — SATs and dress size given about equal weight (that dirty word). Marissa Kamin's The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero gets this, and so much more, exactly right. The play mixes sharply observed and imagined teenage exchanges, passages inspired by real-life blogs, and media satire, all of it set to the beat of clubby rhythms played by DJ Brenda Black, with smooth direction by Ben Rimalower. It's a terrific antidote to the imaginary teen dreams (angel or vixen) that usually grace the stage. The objects may seem trivial — clothes, clubs, boys — but the underpinning of desperation is deep.
Girl (Gillian Jacobs) desperately wants to get into a good school — the way she wants to get into a club called Guesthouse, a Manhattan nightspot that she and her Jersey buds frequently crash (inattention to the commute factor is an unusual misstep in this well-observed play). Jacobs hits each vulnerable note compellingly, and Kamin presents Girl's worries with heart and humor. In the shadow of her friend, played by ebullient Anna Chlumsky, Girl soon discovers bulimia, and before long she's a zero. She doesn't so much discover this technique as take instruction from Superstar, an imaginary blond vision of media perfection played by giggling, irrepressible Kate Reinders. Superstar also torments Girl with magazinelike quizzes and advice. "You must take the opportunity to tell the world who you are," she lectures. Is Girl Sarah Jessica Parker? Cameron Diaz? Beyoncé? "Curvy all over," Superstar explains, "is just code for fat."
Christopher Sloan and Brian J. Smith, Superstar's hilarious male entourage, play multiple roles — college advisors, Girl's dad, Girl's jock boyfriend — with comic aplomb. In an impressive tour de force, Chlumsky enacts all the blog posts — drunken, desperate, dieting excerpts from a number of girls — and each character is different and convincing.
The sudden shifts from comedy to sadness are well-handled; the boyfriend's soul-deadening, self-absorbed breakup is hard to watch for a woman of any age. Energy sinks a bit in the play's second half — in fairness, the performance I attended was interrupted by a fire alarm, and the pace no doubt was affected by the 20 minutes we spent on the street — and the end, though chilling, feels tacked on. It's unsatisfying, as it has nothing to do with the issues in Girl's life. Even so, The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero is not to be missed by anyone who's ever been, or known, a teenage girl.
Presented by Isaac Robert Hurwitz, Marissa Kamin, Ben Rimalower, and Métropole Ink in association with Jossip.com
at the DR2 Theatre, 103 E. 15th St., NYC.
June 17-July 1. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Tue. and Sun., 7 p.m.
(212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250 or www.telecharge.com.
Casting by Erica Jensen/Calleri Casting.